Every year, to end the year, I put together lists of what I think Apple did best and worst for the last 12 months. I'll have the best list up in a couple of days but, for now, I'm going to spend a cold minute focusing on the negative: What Apple got wrong and how I'd like to see it fix things for next year.

Not because I'm a jerk or a hater or everything else I get called every time I do this, but because every up has its down, every success hides some failure, and there's no company or product that is really so great it can't possibly get any better.

So, what made this year's list?

Siri

Siri is going to go down as one of the biggest unforced errors in Apple's history. After being first-to-market with the service as part of iPhone 4s, mismanagement and neglect led Apple to not only lose its huge lead to the likes of Amazon and Google, and maybe even Microsoft and Samsung, but to leave its customers with over a half a decade of subpar, error-prone, and in some cases simply broken service.

Apple did make strides in 2018. It moved Siri out from under Eddy Cue to Craig Federighi and then to freshly-hired-from-Google, and blessedly-AI-focused John Giannandrea. It also managed to ship HomePod in the spring, not only with AirPlay and a host of longstanding core audio issues fixed but with a really good, if severely limited Siri implementation.

But Apple is still so far behind that absolutely no pressure can be let up. It's going to take everything the company has, every ounce of commitment, focus, resolve, and funding the company has to dig itself out and start building itself up.

I made a video earlier this year that included making Siri more personal, so it understands our contexts better and can be more conversational, expand SiriKit and Shortcuts so that they're more useful to more people across more use cases, make Siri more consistent so it works as similarly as possible across all devices and regions, turn Siri into a mesh network so all nodes are part of a bigger, more useful collective, but ultimately just work towards SiriOS.

Because not having an interface that includes voice and AI as first-class options is soon going to be like not having multitouch… or graphics.

And it's not just a problem for Apple, given how terrible Facebook, Google, and maybe even Amazon — I'm honestly not sure about them yet — have been with privacy and security, having a competitive Siri isn't just nice, it's necessary. Without it, people are going to choose data harvesting that does what they want over privacy that frustrates and fails them almost every time.

Because of Giannandrea's hire, his reporting directly to Tim Cook, and the amount of Siri job listings going up and up I'm not willing to bet but I'm willing to hope again that series improvements and updates are being readied for the near future.

HomeKit

Apple typically owns the mindshare in any category in which it competes. Even if you don't have an iPhone or iPad or Apple Watch or Mac, you hear all about them. You know all about them. They get copied by almost all other vendors, and they're the grade almost every other vendor's products are curved against.

Now that the smartphone market is beyond mature, though, and has become the platform upon which everything else is being built, it's not so much the big things that matter anymore but a multitude of many smaller things. Including HomeKit things.

And Apple doesn't have the same mindshare there. It just doesn't. And that was beyond notable last CES.

Amazon and Alexa were — everywhere — and Google and its home products weren't far beyond. Apple hadn't released HomePod yet but HomeKit has been out for years… it just didn't get anywhere nearly as much attention. And it didn't demand it either.

First, Apple doesn't attend CES. Well, not in a public-facing capacity at least. Back in the days of Macworld Expo, that didn't matter. The iPhone launch, the MacBook Air unveiling… it wasn't uncommon for Apple to completely overshadow the bigger, louder show completely.

But for the last long while, Apple hasn't done anything big until March or June. And it hasn't really mattered because no one else was really doing anything big at the beginning of the year either.

Now we have all the connected health and home and other devices, and everyone not Apple gets the spotlight all to themselves.

The branding doesn't really help either. Works with Alexa, Works with Google Home… Works with HomeKit? HomeKit is a framework. All Kits are in Apple land, going back to AppKit and UIKit, and forward to SiriKit and ARKit.

But they've never been used as part of public marketing before. App buttons, for example, don't say "Works with UIKit". They say "Download from App Store"!

"Works with Siri" like "Works with Alexa" would be great if Siri had been rock solid for years already, but an even better, even more encompassing, even more consistent brand would be Apple Home as in Apple Logo Home, like Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Apple Music.

It's not a huge thing but huge things never are. It's just shorter, sweeter, simpler, and more welcoming.

And if Apple could figure out a way to be at CES or to counter-program CES again, maybe just as a sequel to the Rock using Siri around the house — anything that demands attention, well, maybe, just maybe Apple wouldn't be excluded from that conversation early next year. It wouldn't own it, but it would start being part of it.

International

Apple shipped Music to 100 countries on day one. It has editorial teams in many regions, discovering and promoting local talent, and otherwise doing some pretty amazing things for the industry and for listeners.

For a long time, Apple has had a consequential lead internationally, providing media and other services, even Siri language support, in far more places and languages than anywhere else.

But, over the last few years, that seems to have slowed down.

Apple news was announced as part of iOS 9 in 2015. It launched in the United States with Australia and the U.K. following soon thereafter. Then… nothing. Over three years of nothing.

No doubt News is non-trivial, requiring editors and arrangements with publications on a local level. But, again, Apple Music, 100 countries at launch, editors everywhere.

Maybe Apple is waiting to launch its new Texture-based magazine and newspaper subscriptions service before adding new countries, but if so, at the very least, it could have offered basic add-your-own-feeds to every other region in the meantime.

In the age of the internet, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to read Daring Fireball or Six Colors in the News app no matter where I live from day one.

By the same token, there are many places still waiting on basic Siri service, on the TV app, on HomePod, Apple Pay, and, outside the U.S., on Apple Pay cash.

Initially, Apple often lists countries where products and services will be coming next. But after a while, that dries up, and no one knows what to expect and when. I understand the desire not to create expectational debt — to shut up and ship. But that only works if you ship.

I have no idea how difficult those services are to roll out internationally, but we do know that we're customers, just like everybody else, and we pay for our Apple devices, just like everyone else — and in some cases, thanks to exchange rates, tariffs, and taxes, way more than many others — and we get fewer, sometimes far fewer features and services for our money.

And I get that having to deal with international financial institutions is no walk in the park for Apple Pay, and having to tune Siri for every dialect across multilingual titles and with vastly different metadata in every region makes HomePod launches take longer than people assume.

But making the News and TV apps available everywhere, all at once, with whatever open feeds and local apps can work with them now would be a good start.

App Store

The biggest now-now-now problem in the App Store this year and for a few years now has been scam apps. Apps that trick people into egregiously expensive subscriptions and essentially steal their money for a period of time.

Developer David Barnard has done a great job documenting the problem and Apple has so far done a terrible job at fixing it.

Some have suggested Apple doesn't want to fix it because it would negatively impact App Store revenue. I don't believe that. Apple, historically, has been really good at seeing the long-term value of taking short-term hits if it improves customer experience.

But, whatever the reason, it is and always has taken Apple far too long to address App Store abuse. The company will kill an app even by a well known and loved indie developer in an instant if it wants to send a message about user experience or some guideline or another, but knock-offs and scams persist for weeks and months. Apple just has to do better here. Because customers literally being ripped off is a far bigger and more important problem than a calculator being stuffed into a widget or an iPhone icon showing up in an app.

Since Phil Schiller has taken over the U.S. App Store we've seen a long series of qualitative improvements, from review times to updated guidelines to a whole new store. If 2019 is the year Apple solves for scams, I think everyone would be profoundly better off.

Scaling

I've been on the fence about including scaling in this list again this year. Here's what I said last year:

Once upon a time, Apple made desktop computers. Now, Apple makes computers for your desk, lap, living room, hands, pockets, wrists, and ears. And they're working on more. They're also working on everything that runs and plays on all those computers, both in terms of software and services.

Yet, through it all, Apple has maintained its functional organization and small, focused team-based approach.

Our greatest strength is often our greatest weakness. So too, Apple's culture. It's what lets the company do so much but what also causes so much to be left undone.

I'm not one of the people who think Apple needs to abandon its past to better serve the future. I don't think Apple needs to or should become IBM or GE. I think Apple can have its culture and scale it too. But I think it's got to do a much, much better job shoring up its foundations as it keeps building.

It shouldn't take a come-to-Jesus moment to get us to the next Mac Pro and Pro Display. It shouldn't be three or more years without Mac mini refreshes or Continuity for media. Siri still shouldn't feel like there's one server on the farm that just can't handle questions and we all hit it randomly a few times a day or week. It shouldn't take HomePod to get AV rock solid. It shouldn't take the worst possible headlines to get Apple to properly explain battery-based throttling. And it absolutely shouldn't take root/blank and other exploits being posted in public to get the security teams engaged and quality assurance overhauled.

For a company so good at fusing efficiency cores with performance cores, wide angle with telephoto lenses, local storage with online, SSD with HDD — and making sure it fills the gaps at the bottom left by profound increases at the top — it makes me wonder if a similar approach couldn't work for Apple itself. Continue to let the teams run as fast as they can and work on all the new features that Apple and customers want to see. But slide in other teams behind them that focus exclusively on maintaining and improving what's already there.

These are all growing pains. The problems that come with a company based on focus having to focus on multiple things at the same time. They're problems of scale.

But unless Apple wants to go back to only making one or two products, its the core problem Apple absolutely has to solve in 2018.

In large part, I think Apple has addressed many of these issues. It pushed back HomePod to fix underlying problems with audio and to solidify Siri. It pushed back some of iOS 12 to iOS 13 so that key engineers could work on performance improvements instead. It updated and shipped a new Mac mini and a new MacBook Air.

And, yeah, I'll pause so you can hit me with your absolute best finally.

We got new Apple Watch and iPad Pro designs, and a new iPhone with XR.

There are a few things we didn't get, though. No Amber Lake MacBooks or Coffee Lake iMacs. And while Apple canceled the AirPort Extreme and repeated that a new Pro Display will be coming as soon as next year with the new modular Mac Pro, the iPad mini and iPod Touch are still in limbo.

So, I'm going to say I've gone from being cautiously pessimistic to cautiously optimistic that Apple has figured out how to handle a functional organization at scale. But, I'm going to keep it on the list for another year just to see if Apple can keep up both the focus on quality and on quantity in 2019.

Pricing.

A lot of people have been complaining that Apple's prices have gotten too high. I think there is an argument to be made that higher prices, while great for Wall Street and its never-ending thirst for higher average sale price — ASP — starts pricing people out of the Apple ecosystem.

On the flip side, Apple isn't simply charging more for the same products, it's making more expensive products and then charging roughly the same margins on them. The iPhone X series are expensive products to make. Same with the new iPads. Same with the new Macs. And those are the products Apple wants to make.

But if people start perceiving Apple differently, as going from affordable luxury to luxury they can't afford, that's bad for everyone.

It's also what happens when phones, like apps and everything else, go from scarcity to commodity.

And as bad as that is for Apple with its huge revenue stream, imagine how bad that is for most phone vendors who make almost no money on their products — which people still complain are priced too goddamn high.

Here, I think adjustments need to be made. Apple has to keep doing what it did with the 9.7-inch iPad this year and push its technologies like Apple Pencil down to entry-level price points. A new low-price iPhone and Mac would be great there too.

Also, on the high-end, Apple has to better explain the value proposition when prices do go up. Steve Jobs did this well with the original iPhone, laying out what each part cost separately and then how much it would cost together. With iPad, Apple also managed to set expectations really high then undercut them by half.

If new products have more expensive parts, say what they are and why, show a slide like the environmental impact one, but that lists everything from Genius appointments to Apple Retail Education to the high resale value of Apple products so people can see the value and not just the cost, so customers can reset expectations and not just leave feeling like they'll have less money in their pockets for no particular reason.

Your list?

Let me know what you think about any and all items on my list above, and any items I left out that you think should be included.

]]>

Every year, to end the year, I put together lists of what I think Apple did best and worst for the last 12 months. I'll have the best list up in a couple of days but, for now, I'm going to spend a cold minute focusing on the negative: What Apple got wrong and how I'd like to see it fix things for next year.

Not because I'm a jerk or a hater or everything else I get called every time I do this, but because every up has its down, every success hides some failure, and there's no company or product that is really so great it can't possibly get any better.

So, what made this year's list?

Siri

Siri is going to go down as one of the biggest unforced errors in Apple's history. After being first-to-market with the service as part of iPhone 4s, mismanagement and neglect led Apple to not only lose its huge lead to the likes of Amazon and Google, and maybe even Microsoft and Samsung, but to leave its customers with over a half a decade of subpar, error-prone, and in some cases simply broken service.

Apple did make strides in 2018. It moved Siri out from under Eddy Cue to Craig Federighi and then to freshly-hired-from-Google, and blessedly-AI-focused John Giannandrea. It also managed to ship HomePod in the spring, not only with AirPlay and a host of longstanding core audio issues fixed but with a really good, if severely limited Siri implementation.

But Apple is still so far behind that absolutely no pressure can be let up. It's going to take everything the company has, every ounce of commitment, focus, resolve, and funding the company has to dig itself out and start building itself up.

I made a video earlier this year that included making Siri more personal, so it understands our contexts better and can be more conversational, expand SiriKit and Shortcuts so that they're more useful to more people across more use cases, make Siri more consistent so it works as similarly as possible across all devices and regions, turn Siri into a mesh network so all nodes are part of a bigger, more useful collective, but ultimately just work towards SiriOS.

Because not having an interface that includes voice and AI as first-class options is soon going to be like not having multitouch… or graphics.

And it's not just a problem for Apple, given how terrible Facebook, Google, and maybe even Amazon — I'm honestly not sure about them yet — have been with privacy and security, having a competitive Siri isn't just nice, it's necessary. Without it, people are going to choose data harvesting that does what they want over privacy that frustrates and fails them almost every time.

Because of Giannandrea's hire, his reporting directly to Tim Cook, and the amount of Siri job listings going up and up I'm not willing to bet but I'm willing to hope again that series improvements and updates are being readied for the near future.

HomeKit

Apple typically owns the mindshare in any category in which it competes. Even if you don't have an iPhone or iPad or Apple Watch or Mac, you hear all about them. You know all about them. They get copied by almost all other vendors, and they're the grade almost every other vendor's products are curved against.

Now that the smartphone market is beyond mature, though, and has become the platform upon which everything else is being built, it's not so much the big things that matter anymore but a multitude of many smaller things. Including HomeKit things.

And Apple doesn't have the same mindshare there. It just doesn't. And that was beyond notable last CES.

Amazon and Alexa were — everywhere — and Google and its home products weren't far beyond. Apple hadn't released HomePod yet but HomeKit has been out for years… it just didn't get anywhere nearly as much attention. And it didn't demand it either.

First, Apple doesn't attend CES. Well, not in a public-facing capacity at least. Back in the days of Macworld Expo, that didn't matter. The iPhone launch, the MacBook Air unveiling… it wasn't uncommon for Apple to completely overshadow the bigger, louder show completely.

But for the last long while, Apple hasn't done anything big until March or June. And it hasn't really mattered because no one else was really doing anything big at the beginning of the year either.

Now we have all the connected health and home and other devices, and everyone not Apple gets the spotlight all to themselves.

The branding doesn't really help either. Works with Alexa, Works with Google Home… Works with HomeKit? HomeKit is a framework. All Kits are in Apple land, going back to AppKit and UIKit, and forward to SiriKit and ARKit.

But they've never been used as part of public marketing before. App buttons, for example, don't say "Works with UIKit". They say "Download from App Store"!

"Works with Siri" like "Works with Alexa" would be great if Siri had been rock solid for years already, but an even better, even more encompassing, even more consistent brand would be Apple Home as in Apple Logo Home, like Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Apple Music.

It's not a huge thing but huge things never are. It's just shorter, sweeter, simpler, and more welcoming.

And if Apple could figure out a way to be at CES or to counter-program CES again, maybe just as a sequel to the Rock using Siri around the house — anything that demands attention, well, maybe, just maybe Apple wouldn't be excluded from that conversation early next year. It wouldn't own it, but it would start being part of it.

International

Apple shipped Music to 100 countries on day one. It has editorial teams in many regions, discovering and promoting local talent, and otherwise doing some pretty amazing things for the industry and for listeners.

For a long time, Apple has had a consequential lead internationally, providing media and other services, even Siri language support, in far more places and languages than anywhere else.

But, over the last few years, that seems to have slowed down.

Apple news was announced as part of iOS 9 in 2015. It launched in the United States with Australia and the U.K. following soon thereafter. Then… nothing. Over three years of nothing.

No doubt News is non-trivial, requiring editors and arrangements with publications on a local level. But, again, Apple Music, 100 countries at launch, editors everywhere.

Maybe Apple is waiting to launch its new Texture-based magazine and newspaper subscriptions service before adding new countries, but if so, at the very least, it could have offered basic add-your-own-feeds to every other region in the meantime.

In the age of the internet, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to read Daring Fireball or Six Colors in the News app no matter where I live from day one.

By the same token, there are many places still waiting on basic Siri service, on the TV app, on HomePod, Apple Pay, and, outside the U.S., on Apple Pay cash.

Initially, Apple often lists countries where products and services will be coming next. But after a while, that dries up, and no one knows what to expect and when. I understand the desire not to create expectational debt — to shut up and ship. But that only works if you ship.

I have no idea how difficult those services are to roll out internationally, but we do know that we're customers, just like everybody else, and we pay for our Apple devices, just like everyone else — and in some cases, thanks to exchange rates, tariffs, and taxes, way more than many others — and we get fewer, sometimes far fewer features and services for our money.

And I get that having to deal with international financial institutions is no walk in the park for Apple Pay, and having to tune Siri for every dialect across multilingual titles and with vastly different metadata in every region makes HomePod launches take longer than people assume.

But making the News and TV apps available everywhere, all at once, with whatever open feeds and local apps can work with them now would be a good start.

App Store

The biggest now-now-now problem in the App Store this year and for a few years now has been scam apps. Apps that trick people into egregiously expensive subscriptions and essentially steal their money for a period of time.

Developer David Barnard has done a great job documenting the problem and Apple has so far done a terrible job at fixing it.

Some have suggested Apple doesn't want to fix it because it would negatively impact App Store revenue. I don't believe that. Apple, historically, has been really good at seeing the long-term value of taking short-term hits if it improves customer experience.

But, whatever the reason, it is and always has taken Apple far too long to address App Store abuse. The company will kill an app even by a well known and loved indie developer in an instant if it wants to send a message about user experience or some guideline or another, but knock-offs and scams persist for weeks and months. Apple just has to do better here. Because customers literally being ripped off is a far bigger and more important problem than a calculator being stuffed into a widget or an iPhone icon showing up in an app.

Since Phil Schiller has taken over the U.S. App Store we've seen a long series of qualitative improvements, from review times to updated guidelines to a whole new store. If 2019 is the year Apple solves for scams, I think everyone would be profoundly better off.

Scaling

I've been on the fence about including scaling in this list again this year. Here's what I said last year:

Once upon a time, Apple made desktop computers. Now, Apple makes computers for your desk, lap, living room, hands, pockets, wrists, and ears. And they're working on more. They're also working on everything that runs and plays on all those computers, both in terms of software and services.

Yet, through it all, Apple has maintained its functional organization and small, focused team-based approach.

Our greatest strength is often our greatest weakness. So too, Apple's culture. It's what lets the company do so much but what also causes so much to be left undone.

I'm not one of the people who think Apple needs to abandon its past to better serve the future. I don't think Apple needs to or should become IBM or GE. I think Apple can have its culture and scale it too. But I think it's got to do a much, much better job shoring up its foundations as it keeps building.

It shouldn't take a come-to-Jesus moment to get us to the next Mac Pro and Pro Display. It shouldn't be three or more years without Mac mini refreshes or Continuity for media. Siri still shouldn't feel like there's one server on the farm that just can't handle questions and we all hit it randomly a few times a day or week. It shouldn't take HomePod to get AV rock solid. It shouldn't take the worst possible headlines to get Apple to properly explain battery-based throttling. And it absolutely shouldn't take root/blank and other exploits being posted in public to get the security teams engaged and quality assurance overhauled.

For a company so good at fusing efficiency cores with performance cores, wide angle with telephoto lenses, local storage with online, SSD with HDD — and making sure it fills the gaps at the bottom left by profound increases at the top — it makes me wonder if a similar approach couldn't work for Apple itself. Continue to let the teams run as fast as they can and work on all the new features that Apple and customers want to see. But slide in other teams behind them that focus exclusively on maintaining and improving what's already there.

These are all growing pains. The problems that come with a company based on focus having to focus on multiple things at the same time. They're problems of scale.

But unless Apple wants to go back to only making one or two products, its the core problem Apple absolutely has to solve in 2018.

In large part, I think Apple has addressed many of these issues. It pushed back HomePod to fix underlying problems with audio and to solidify Siri. It pushed back some of iOS 12 to iOS 13 so that key engineers could work on performance improvements instead. It updated and shipped a new Mac mini and a new MacBook Air.

And, yeah, I'll pause so you can hit me with your absolute best finally.

We got new Apple Watch and iPad Pro designs, and a new iPhone with XR.

There are a few things we didn't get, though. No Amber Lake MacBooks or Coffee Lake iMacs. And while Apple canceled the AirPort Extreme and repeated that a new Pro Display will be coming as soon as next year with the new modular Mac Pro, the iPad mini and iPod Touch are still in limbo.

So, I'm going to say I've gone from being cautiously pessimistic to cautiously optimistic that Apple has figured out how to handle a functional organization at scale. But, I'm going to keep it on the list for another year just to see if Apple can keep up both the focus on quality and on quantity in 2019.

Pricing.

A lot of people have been complaining that Apple's prices have gotten too high. I think there is an argument to be made that higher prices, while great for Wall Street and its never-ending thirst for higher average sale price — ASP — starts pricing people out of the Apple ecosystem.

On the flip side, Apple isn't simply charging more for the same products, it's making more expensive products and then charging roughly the same margins on them. The iPhone X series are expensive products to make. Same with the new iPads. Same with the new Macs. And those are the products Apple wants to make.

But if people start perceiving Apple differently, as going from affordable luxury to luxury they can't afford, that's bad for everyone.

It's also what happens when phones, like apps and everything else, go from scarcity to commodity.

And as bad as that is for Apple with its huge revenue stream, imagine how bad that is for most phone vendors who make almost no money on their products — which people still complain are priced too goddamn high.

Here, I think adjustments need to be made. Apple has to keep doing what it did with the 9.7-inch iPad this year and push its technologies like Apple Pencil down to entry-level price points. A new low-price iPhone and Mac would be great there too.

Also, on the high-end, Apple has to better explain the value proposition when prices do go up. Steve Jobs did this well with the original iPhone, laying out what each part cost separately and then how much it would cost together. With iPad, Apple also managed to set expectations really high then undercut them by half.

If new products have more expensive parts, say what they are and why, show a slide like the environmental impact one, but that lists everything from Genius appointments to Apple Retail Education to the high resale value of Apple products so people can see the value and not just the cost, so customers can reset expectations and not just leave feeling like they'll have less money in their pockets for no particular reason.

Your list?

Let me know what you think about any and all items on my list above, and any items I left out that you think should be included.

A Smart Battery case for iPhone XS would take its already impressive battery life to the next level, while only adding extra bulk when and if you absolutely needed it. Gimme.

Through the miracles of hyper-efficient technology and hyper-aggressive power management, iPhone XS gets gets even better battery life than the iPhone X — by 30 minutes. iPhone XS Max, much better still. Yet I want more. I need more.

Everything from Instagram to Snapchat, Pokémon Go to ARKit apps — which light up the screen, the radios, and location services — gobble up power faster than ever before.

You can make iPhones thicker, but then they're heavier and harder to hold up for long periods of time, all the time. And if you can't use your iPhone for as long as you want, who cares how much battery life it has? Unless, of course, that extra thickness and weight can be put on and taken off only when and if you really need it.

That's where a new Smart Battery Case comes in. I've wanted one for a couple years already and now, increasingly, hints in code and inventories are showing we just might get it.

The really smart battery

The Smart Battery case is of my favorite Apple products of the last few years is. A lot of customers and even reviewers completely underestimated it at first. They couldn't see past the hump being hella ugly and the "milliamp cost" messing with their pricing preconceptions.

Previous battery cases were a mixed blessing. They often reduced radio reception, forcing the phone to amp up its radios just to maintain a signal, and burning power just as it was trying to recharge. The Smart Battery Case cut the sides away, leaving the hump, so as not to interfere, and then added a signal booster to improve reception and prevent the drain so the battery could focus on charging.

Likewise, many battery cases would put iOS into plugged-in mode where, with the expectation of unlimited power, it would turn on networking to download content updates, sync large amounts of data, stop worrying about race-to-sleep, and more. The Smart Battery Case would insist iOS stay in mobile mode so that none of those extra activities would fire, and none of their extra power demands would affect charging.

It all added up to Smart Battery case the best way to add extra power to your iPhone. The hump was form-over-function and "milliamp efficiency" the critical stat.

Whenever I went out with iPhone 6s or iPhone 7, I had the Smart Battery case with me. It got me through travel, where lousy airport reception and roaming would otherwise shred my battery life, and conferences and shows where there was often no time to plug in.

The case for Xs

I've been using iPhone X and iPhone XS for over a year now and it's been a champ, even under the grueling load of reviewing and writing about its every new flaw and feature. It manages to last almost as long as my iPhone Plus of yore but fits in my hand and pocket like the regular sized iPhone. It's blissful.

Because it's only about the size of a regular iPhone, it's made me wonder what already iPhone Plus level battery life would be like... with a Smart Battery Case option to go with it?

I think it would be like iPhone XS Max, which is a tank.

And iPhone Xs Max with a smart battery case? Forget it. Tanker.

Inductive reasoning

The best question around a new Smart Battery Case is what it would be like in the age of inductive charging. Would it ignore it completely and function like the Smart Battery Case of yore? Would it embrace it and include the coils necessary to charge the case on an inductive pad, even at the expense of battery cell volume?

Apple might go for strict power efficiency here rather than charging convenience, because that's literally the smart approach, but it'll be interesting to see if and how it all plays out.

Rumors and hints notwithstanding, when it comes to anything power related, I've learned to only expect it when I see it.

Still, this is probably the Apple product I'd most love to show up in stockings this holiday season.

Originally published in November 2017, updated for iPhone XS in December 2018

A Smart Battery case for iPhone XS would take its already impressive battery life to the next level, while only adding extra bulk when and if you absolutely needed it. Gimme.

Through the miracles of hyper-efficient technology and hyper-aggressive power management, iPhone XS gets gets even better battery life than the iPhone X — by 30 minutes. iPhone XS Max, much better still. Yet I want more. I need more.

Everything from Instagram to Snapchat, Pokémon Go to ARKit apps — which light up the screen, the radios, and location services — gobble up power faster than ever before.

You can make iPhones thicker, but then they're heavier and harder to hold up for long periods of time, all the time. And if you can't use your iPhone for as long as you want, who cares how much battery life it has? Unless, of course, that extra thickness and weight can be put on and taken off only when and if you really need it.

That's where a new Smart Battery Case comes in. I've wanted one for a couple years already and now, increasingly, hints in code and inventories are showing we just might get it.

The really smart battery

The Smart Battery case is of my favorite Apple products of the last few years is. A lot of customers and even reviewers completely underestimated it at first. They couldn't see past the hump being hella ugly and the "milliamp cost" messing with their pricing preconceptions.

Previous battery cases were a mixed blessing. They often reduced radio reception, forcing the phone to amp up its radios just to maintain a signal, and burning power just as it was trying to recharge. The Smart Battery Case cut the sides away, leaving the hump, so as not to interfere, and then added a signal booster to improve reception and prevent the drain so the battery could focus on charging.

Likewise, many battery cases would put iOS into plugged-in mode where, with the expectation of unlimited power, it would turn on networking to download content updates, sync large amounts of data, stop worrying about race-to-sleep, and more. The Smart Battery Case would insist iOS stay in mobile mode so that none of those extra activities would fire, and none of their extra power demands would affect charging.

It all added up to Smart Battery case the best way to add extra power to your iPhone. The hump was form-over-function and "milliamp efficiency" the critical stat.

Whenever I went out with iPhone 6s or iPhone 7, I had the Smart Battery case with me. It got me through travel, where lousy airport reception and roaming would otherwise shred my battery life, and conferences and shows where there was often no time to plug in.

The case for Xs

I've been using iPhone X and iPhone XS for over a year now and it's been a champ, even under the grueling load of reviewing and writing about its every new flaw and feature. It manages to last almost as long as my iPhone Plus of yore but fits in my hand and pocket like the regular sized iPhone. It's blissful.

Because it's only about the size of a regular iPhone, it's made me wonder what already iPhone Plus level battery life would be like... with a Smart Battery Case option to go with it?

I think it would be like iPhone XS Max, which is a tank.

And iPhone Xs Max with a smart battery case? Forget it. Tanker.

Inductive reasoning

The best question around a new Smart Battery Case is what it would be like in the age of inductive charging. Would it ignore it completely and function like the Smart Battery Case of yore? Would it embrace it and include the coils necessary to charge the case on an inductive pad, even at the expense of battery cell volume?

Apple might go for strict power efficiency here rather than charging convenience, because that's literally the smart approach, but it'll be interesting to see if and how it all plays out.

Rumors and hints notwithstanding, when it comes to anything power related, I've learned to only expect it when I see it.

Still, this is probably the Apple product I'd most love to show up in stockings this holiday season.

Originally published in November 2017, updated for iPhone XS in December 2018

What is Project Titan, Apple's secretive car project? When will it ship, how will it work, and how much will it cost? Nobody outside Apple's upper echelon knows for sure, but here are all the rumors currently making the rounds!

Just like iPhone started off as a tablet, became a phone, and then expanded to a tablet again, Apple Car will likely take a twisting, turning path to market. That's if it ever comes to market. Plenty of Apple projects, including the television set, never have.

The car feels different, though. For one thing, due to regulatory issues, it's forced to be more public than most of Apple's special projects. Second, the logistical revolution is real and Apple is uniquely positioned to be one of the major players in that space.

Because autonomous cars won't just be about the destination, they'll be about the differentiated experience of the journey.

After spending three years in design at Microsoft, most recently working on the company's HoloLens, Andrew Kim left for Tesla in 2016. He worked on about all of the company's vehicles, including the upcoming Model Y, next-gen Roadster, and Tesla Semi.

Last week, Kim shared on Instagram about his first day at Apple with his title on LinkedIn set as "Designer."

Let the Mixed-Reality Car rumors fly!

August 31, 2018: Nissan Leaf crashes into Apple Car — Humans 0 : AI 1

Apple has been testing its autonomous driving system for a while now in specially outfitted Lexus SUVs. On August 24, a Nissan Leaf decided to have a go at one.

On August 24th at 2:58 p.m., an Apple vehicle in autonomous mode was rear-ended while preparing to merge onto Lawrence Expressway South from Kifer Road. The Apple test vehicle was traveling less than 1 mph waiting for a safe gap to complete the merge when a 2016 Nissan Leaf contacted the Apple test vehicle at approximately 15 mph. Both vehicles sustained damage and no injuries were reported by either party.

No fault on Apple or its Project Titan-mobile here. Humans, watch where you're going!

August 15, 2018: Apple Car release date rumored for 2023-2025

Apple supply-chain exfiltrator extraordinaire, Kuo Ming-Chi of TF International Securities, has sent out a new note to investors and, as usual, it's making the rounds.

We expect that Apple Car, which will likely be launched in 2023–2025, will be the next star product. The reasons for this are as follows: (1) Potentially huge replacement demands are emerging in the auto sector because it is being redefined by new technologies. The case is the same as the smartphone sector 10 years ago; (2) Apple's leading technology advantages (e.g. AR) would redefine cars and differentiate Apple Car from peers' products; (3) Apple's service will grow significantly by entering the huge car finance market via Apple Car, and (4) Apple can do a better integration of hardware, software, and service than current competitors in the consumer electronics sector and potential competitors in the auto sector.

Because Kuo's sources are tied to the supply chain, and the Apple Car isn't in any stage of production yet, it's hard to tell where he got those numbers from. Still, we're still years away from AR and ML technologies being ready for even semi-autonomous mainstream vehicles, so as guesses go it's certainly not the worst.

When combined with the upcoming Apple AR Glasses and growing services revenue, Kuo thinks it could drive the new trillion-dollar company to a 2 trillion dollar valuation.

As a reminder, though: Nothing unshipped exists. Expect those trillions only when you see them.

August 9, 2018: From Mac to Tesla and back to Titan: Doug Field returns to Apple

Doug Field, who helped run Mac hardware at Apple before going to Tesla for the Model, 3 is back at Apple and working on Apple's car project, Titan.

Here's some interesting hiring news I've heard through the little birdie grapevine:1 Doug Field — who left Tesla in May after overseeing Model 3 production — has returned to Apple, working in Bob Mansfield's project Titan group. Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr confirmed with me only that Field has returned to Apple, but no one should find it surprising that he's working on Titan.

Field previously worked at Apple as a VP of Mac hardware engineering before leaving for Tesla 2013. So he spent years working closely (and successfully) with Mansfield on Mac hardware, and spent the last few years as senior VP of engineering at the world's premiere electric carmaker. That makes Field a seemingly perfect fit for Titan.

The patent claims that many autonomous vehicle systems base their navigation on static information — like maps — and use sensors to identify real-time information on the elements that change from day to day, as a way of minimizing the intense computing power needed to drive a car.

Instead, Apple's system would be able to direct the car "independently of any data received from any devices external to the vehicle, and any navigation data stored locally to the vehicle prior to any monitoring of navigation." Apple's technology proposes a computerized model for predicting routes using sensors and processors in the vehicle.

December 10, 2017: Apple's on the hunt for AI engineers

Wired reported midday Saturday on a recent Apple-hosted professional lunch for AI engineers. Hosted by Apple's director of artificial intelligence, Ruslan Salakhutdinov, the lunch revealed several results from the company's AI projects:

The scale and scope of any car project at Apple remains unclear. Salakhutdinov didn't say how the projects he discussed Friday fit into any wider effort in automated driving, and a company spokesman declined to elaborate.

Salakhutdinov showed data from one project previously disclosed in a research paper posted online last month. It trained software to identify pedestrians and cyclists using 3-D scanners called lidars used on most autonomous vehicles.

The New York Times has recapitulated a lot of the recent history of Apple's car project, codenamed Titan. There's a new bit, though, that focuses on the idea of autonomous shuttle between Paulo Alto and Apple's Infinite Loop campus.

Apple's testing vehicles will carry employees between its various Silicon Valley offices. The new effort is called PAIL, short for Palo Alto to Infinite Loop, the address of the company's main office in Cupertino, Calif., and a few miles down the road from Palo Alto, Calif.

Apple's in-house shuttle service, which isn't operational yet, follows Waymo, Uber and a number of car companies that have been testing driverless cars on city streets around the world.

Autonomous shuttles is an idea that was bandied about for a while both inside the project and out. It'll be interesting to see when and how they go ahead.

June 13, 2017: Tim Cook confirms Apple is working on the mother of all AI projects — autonomous driving

We're focusing on autonomous systems. It's a core technology that we view as very important. We sort of see it as the mother of all AI projects. It's probably one of the most difficult A.I. projects actually to work on.

Cook wouldn't say whether Apple would produce an "Apple Car" for sale or for ride-sharing, or partner with another manufacturer, service, or several.

We'll see where it takes us. We're not really saying from a product point of view what we will do.

What Apple is currently doing is focusing on everything it takes to ingest the world around us and understanding what it means in the context of navigating it and actually driving it. In other words, getting from where you are to where you're going, all through an autonomous system.

Where that system ends up, and the experience around it, we'll have to wait and see.

Apple is looking to make some changes to California's self-driving car testing policy. As first noted by Reuters, Apple is looking for California to clarify or change its positions on certain testing regulations in order to make easier for self-driving vehicles to reach public acceptance.

Apple believes that public acceptance is essential to the advancement of automated vehicles. Access to transparent and intuitive data on the safety of the vehicles being tested will be central to gaining public acceptance. However, the current and proposed disengagement reporting requirements do not achieve this result.

In particular, Apple takes issue with current rules about disengagement reporting and testing without a safety driver, along with some definitions. In the case of definitions Apple seems to be seeking these changes so that these regulations don't hinder the company's development of additional technologies that could improve self-driving vehicles.

April 21, 2017: Apple's car project, Titan, ready to train testers

Last year Apple pivoted its Project Titan from a full-on car project to a platform designed to enable autonomous vehicles, whether they're eventually made by Apple or a partner manufacturer or ride-sharing service. It looks like that platform is now ready for early testing.

The documents obtained by Business Insider include a "Development Platform Specific Training" as well as details about an autonomous-vehicle system called the "Apple Automated System." Among the key training issues are instructions on how to regain manual control of an autonomous car if necessary.

According to the training packet, Apple's self-driving car uses a Logitech wheel and pedals to actuate drive by wire, and it supports one person at a time.

The drivers, mostly Ph.D's involved with the machine learning program, have to pass seven tests to be considered trained to, among other things, take back control of the system should they ever need to.

Apple has officially been granted a permit to test driverless vehicles in the state of California. According to the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), the state has issued a permit to Apple. Additionally, as of April 14, 2017, Apple is the most recent recipient of such a permit.

Dan Dodge, the founder and former chief executive officer of QNX, the operating system developer that BlackBerry acquired in 2010, joined Apple earlier this year, the people said. He is part of a team headed by Bob Mansfield, who, since taking over leadership of the cars initiative -- dubbed Project Titan -- has heralded a shift in strategy, according to a person familiar with the plan.

Apple previously hired the head of QNX software to run Core OS, which makes foundational software for both macOS and iOS. Apple has also reportedly raided QNX talent in Ottawa, setting up an office in the same area to work on Apple's own automotive software project.

July 25, 2016: Bob Mansfield takes over Project Titan

Apple Inc. has tapped a highly-regarded senior executive who helped bring to market many of Apple's signature products to oversee its fledgling automobile project, according to people familiar with the matter.

Bob Mansfield had stepped back from a day-to-day role at the company a few years ago, after leading the hardware engineering development of products including the MacBook Air laptop computer, the iMac desktop computer, and the iPad tablet. Apple now has Mr. Mansfield running the company's secret autonomous, electric-vehicle initiative, code-named Project Titan, the people said.

Titan was previously under senior vice president of hardware engineering, Dan Riccio who took over part of Mansfield's duties at the top of Apple's hardware-based organization back in 2012. (Senior vice president of hardware technologies, Johny Srouji, took over platform architecture.)

Despite downshifting from his day-to-day responsibilities, Mansfield has still been seen regularly at Apple's Infinite Loop campus, and has remained involved with the company. Following a project review last month, it's been rumored Apple felt bringing Mansfield — who helped launch iMac, MacBook, iPhone and iPad — to what comes next, would give Titan a lead with both enormous experience and the benefit of singular focus.

It seems like a win/win all around. And that's important at a place like Apple where senior vice presidents have plates already beyond full.

Is Project Titan really an Apple Car?

It was once. Now it's probably better to think of it as an autonomous driving platform. The distinction might be obscure right now but everything about how we drive is changing and Apple needs to build for the future, not for the present. Telsa and Uber show the direction it's going. Apple has to be there too.

So... no actual car?

It's unlikely Apple will manufacture its own engine, drive train, suspension system, etc. at this point and more likely the company will partner with a manufacturer or multiple manufacturers already adept at manufacturing those parts.

But Project Titan is more than just CarPlay?

Much more. CarPlay is an integration layer on top of existing automotive infotainment units that offers Siri and dashboard-optimized front ends for iPhone apps. Apple Car is the complete digital environment for an autonomous driving experience. In other words, CarPlay will be seen as the Moto ROKR to Apple Car's iPhone.

Will Apple Car software also run on Mac and iPhone?

That was one of the original dreams — a next-generation operating system and development stack that would leap past iOS, macOS, and Xcode the way NeXT technology's leaped past the original Mac System software.

Would Apple license a carOS to BMW, McLaren, and other car makers?

Never say never.

Are there wilder options?

Apple getting a fleet of cars built on its own dime that it then makes available as a service to anyone with an iPhone. Get it, automagically engage all your own, personal, entertainment options, and then sit back, relax, and enjoy your ride.

Sold! When can I buy... er subscribe... er, pay as I go... er, whatever!

What is Project Titan, Apple's secretive car project? When will it ship, how will it work, and how much will it cost? Nobody outside Apple's upper echelon knows for sure, but here are all the rumors currently making the rounds!

Just like iPhone started off as a tablet, became a phone, and then expanded to a tablet again, Apple Car will likely take a twisting, turning path to market. That's if it ever comes to market. Plenty of Apple projects, including the television set, never have.

The car feels different, though. For one thing, due to regulatory issues, it's forced to be more public than most of Apple's special projects. Second, the logistical revolution is real and Apple is uniquely positioned to be one of the major players in that space.

Because autonomous cars won't just be about the destination, they'll be about the differentiated experience of the journey.

After spending three years in design at Microsoft, most recently working on the company's HoloLens, Andrew Kim left for Tesla in 2016. He worked on about all of the company's vehicles, including the upcoming Model Y, next-gen Roadster, and Tesla Semi.

Last week, Kim shared on Instagram about his first day at Apple with his title on LinkedIn set as "Designer."

Let the Mixed-Reality Car rumors fly!

August 31, 2018: Nissan Leaf crashes into Apple Car — Humans 0 : AI 1

Apple has been testing its autonomous driving system for a while now in specially outfitted Lexus SUVs. On August 24, a Nissan Leaf decided to have a go at one.

On August 24th at 2:58 p.m., an Apple vehicle in autonomous mode was rear-ended while preparing to merge onto Lawrence Expressway South from Kifer Road. The Apple test vehicle was traveling less than 1 mph waiting for a safe gap to complete the merge when a 2016 Nissan Leaf contacted the Apple test vehicle at approximately 15 mph. Both vehicles sustained damage and no injuries were reported by either party.

No fault on Apple or its Project Titan-mobile here. Humans, watch where you're going!

August 15, 2018: Apple Car release date rumored for 2023-2025

Apple supply-chain exfiltrator extraordinaire, Kuo Ming-Chi of TF International Securities, has sent out a new note to investors and, as usual, it's making the rounds.

We expect that Apple Car, which will likely be launched in 2023–2025, will be the next star product. The reasons for this are as follows: (1) Potentially huge replacement demands are emerging in the auto sector because it is being redefined by new technologies. The case is the same as the smartphone sector 10 years ago; (2) Apple's leading technology advantages (e.g. AR) would redefine cars and differentiate Apple Car from peers' products; (3) Apple's service will grow significantly by entering the huge car finance market via Apple Car, and (4) Apple can do a better integration of hardware, software, and service than current competitors in the consumer electronics sector and potential competitors in the auto sector.

Because Kuo's sources are tied to the supply chain, and the Apple Car isn't in any stage of production yet, it's hard to tell where he got those numbers from. Still, we're still years away from AR and ML technologies being ready for even semi-autonomous mainstream vehicles, so as guesses go it's certainly not the worst.

When combined with the upcoming Apple AR Glasses and growing services revenue, Kuo thinks it could drive the new trillion-dollar company to a 2 trillion dollar valuation.

As a reminder, though: Nothing unshipped exists. Expect those trillions only when you see them.

August 9, 2018: From Mac to Tesla and back to Titan: Doug Field returns to Apple

Doug Field, who helped run Mac hardware at Apple before going to Tesla for the Model, 3 is back at Apple and working on Apple's car project, Titan.

Here's some interesting hiring news I've heard through the little birdie grapevine:1 Doug Field — who left Tesla in May after overseeing Model 3 production — has returned to Apple, working in Bob Mansfield's project Titan group. Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr confirmed with me only that Field has returned to Apple, but no one should find it surprising that he's working on Titan.

Field previously worked at Apple as a VP of Mac hardware engineering before leaving for Tesla 2013. So he spent years working closely (and successfully) with Mansfield on Mac hardware, and spent the last few years as senior VP of engineering at the world's premiere electric carmaker. That makes Field a seemingly perfect fit for Titan.

The patent claims that many autonomous vehicle systems base their navigation on static information — like maps — and use sensors to identify real-time information on the elements that change from day to day, as a way of minimizing the intense computing power needed to drive a car.

Instead, Apple's system would be able to direct the car "independently of any data received from any devices external to the vehicle, and any navigation data stored locally to the vehicle prior to any monitoring of navigation." Apple's technology proposes a computerized model for predicting routes using sensors and processors in the vehicle.

December 10, 2017: Apple's on the hunt for AI engineers

Wired reported midday Saturday on a recent Apple-hosted professional lunch for AI engineers. Hosted by Apple's director of artificial intelligence, Ruslan Salakhutdinov, the lunch revealed several results from the company's AI projects:

The scale and scope of any car project at Apple remains unclear. Salakhutdinov didn't say how the projects he discussed Friday fit into any wider effort in automated driving, and a company spokesman declined to elaborate.

Salakhutdinov showed data from one project previously disclosed in a research paper posted online last month. It trained software to identify pedestrians and cyclists using 3-D scanners called lidars used on most autonomous vehicles.

The New York Times has recapitulated a lot of the recent history of Apple's car project, codenamed Titan. There's a new bit, though, that focuses on the idea of autonomous shuttle between Paulo Alto and Apple's Infinite Loop campus.

Apple's testing vehicles will carry employees between its various Silicon Valley offices. The new effort is called PAIL, short for Palo Alto to Infinite Loop, the address of the company's main office in Cupertino, Calif., and a few miles down the road from Palo Alto, Calif.

Apple's in-house shuttle service, which isn't operational yet, follows Waymo, Uber and a number of car companies that have been testing driverless cars on city streets around the world.

Autonomous shuttles is an idea that was bandied about for a while both inside the project and out. It'll be interesting to see when and how they go ahead.

June 13, 2017: Tim Cook confirms Apple is working on the mother of all AI projects — autonomous driving

We're focusing on autonomous systems. It's a core technology that we view as very important. We sort of see it as the mother of all AI projects. It's probably one of the most difficult A.I. projects actually to work on.

Cook wouldn't say whether Apple would produce an "Apple Car" for sale or for ride-sharing, or partner with another manufacturer, service, or several.

We'll see where it takes us. We're not really saying from a product point of view what we will do.

What Apple is currently doing is focusing on everything it takes to ingest the world around us and understanding what it means in the context of navigating it and actually driving it. In other words, getting from where you are to where you're going, all through an autonomous system.

Where that system ends up, and the experience around it, we'll have to wait and see.

Apple is looking to make some changes to California's self-driving car testing policy. As first noted by Reuters, Apple is looking for California to clarify or change its positions on certain testing regulations in order to make easier for self-driving vehicles to reach public acceptance.

Apple believes that public acceptance is essential to the advancement of automated vehicles. Access to transparent and intuitive data on the safety of the vehicles being tested will be central to gaining public acceptance. However, the current and proposed disengagement reporting requirements do not achieve this result.

In particular, Apple takes issue with current rules about disengagement reporting and testing without a safety driver, along with some definitions. In the case of definitions Apple seems to be seeking these changes so that these regulations don't hinder the company's development of additional technologies that could improve self-driving vehicles.

April 21, 2017: Apple's car project, Titan, ready to train testers

Last year Apple pivoted its Project Titan from a full-on car project to a platform designed to enable autonomous vehicles, whether they're eventually made by Apple or a partner manufacturer or ride-sharing service. It looks like that platform is now ready for early testing.

The documents obtained by Business Insider include a "Development Platform Specific Training" as well as details about an autonomous-vehicle system called the "Apple Automated System." Among the key training issues are instructions on how to regain manual control of an autonomous car if necessary.

According to the training packet, Apple's self-driving car uses a Logitech wheel and pedals to actuate drive by wire, and it supports one person at a time.

The drivers, mostly Ph.D's involved with the machine learning program, have to pass seven tests to be considered trained to, among other things, take back control of the system should they ever need to.

Apple has officially been granted a permit to test driverless vehicles in the state of California. According to the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), the state has issued a permit to Apple. Additionally, as of April 14, 2017, Apple is the most recent recipient of such a permit.

Dan Dodge, the founder and former chief executive officer of QNX, the operating system developer that BlackBerry acquired in 2010, joined Apple earlier this year, the people said. He is part of a team headed by Bob Mansfield, who, since taking over leadership of the cars initiative -- dubbed Project Titan -- has heralded a shift in strategy, according to a person familiar with the plan.

Apple previously hired the head of QNX software to run Core OS, which makes foundational software for both macOS and iOS. Apple has also reportedly raided QNX talent in Ottawa, setting up an office in the same area to work on Apple's own automotive software project.

July 25, 2016: Bob Mansfield takes over Project Titan

Apple Inc. has tapped a highly-regarded senior executive who helped bring to market many of Apple's signature products to oversee its fledgling automobile project, according to people familiar with the matter.

Bob Mansfield had stepped back from a day-to-day role at the company a few years ago, after leading the hardware engineering development of products including the MacBook Air laptop computer, the iMac desktop computer, and the iPad tablet. Apple now has Mr. Mansfield running the company's secret autonomous, electric-vehicle initiative, code-named Project Titan, the people said.

Titan was previously under senior vice president of hardware engineering, Dan Riccio who took over part of Mansfield's duties at the top of Apple's hardware-based organization back in 2012. (Senior vice president of hardware technologies, Johny Srouji, took over platform architecture.)

Despite downshifting from his day-to-day responsibilities, Mansfield has still been seen regularly at Apple's Infinite Loop campus, and has remained involved with the company. Following a project review last month, it's been rumored Apple felt bringing Mansfield — who helped launch iMac, MacBook, iPhone and iPad — to what comes next, would give Titan a lead with both enormous experience and the benefit of singular focus.

It seems like a win/win all around. And that's important at a place like Apple where senior vice presidents have plates already beyond full.

Is Project Titan really an Apple Car?

It was once. Now it's probably better to think of it as an autonomous driving platform. The distinction might be obscure right now but everything about how we drive is changing and Apple needs to build for the future, not for the present. Telsa and Uber show the direction it's going. Apple has to be there too.

So... no actual car?

It's unlikely Apple will manufacture its own engine, drive train, suspension system, etc. at this point and more likely the company will partner with a manufacturer or multiple manufacturers already adept at manufacturing those parts.

But Project Titan is more than just CarPlay?

Much more. CarPlay is an integration layer on top of existing automotive infotainment units that offers Siri and dashboard-optimized front ends for iPhone apps. Apple Car is the complete digital environment for an autonomous driving experience. In other words, CarPlay will be seen as the Moto ROKR to Apple Car's iPhone.

Will Apple Car software also run on Mac and iPhone?

That was one of the original dreams — a next-generation operating system and development stack that would leap past iOS, macOS, and Xcode the way NeXT technology's leaped past the original Mac System software.

Would Apple license a carOS to BMW, McLaren, and other car makers?

Never say never.

Are there wilder options?

Apple getting a fleet of cars built on its own dime that it then makes available as a service to anyone with an iPhone. Get it, automagically engage all your own, personal, entertainment options, and then sit back, relax, and enjoy your ride.

Sold! When can I buy... er subscribe... er, pay as I go... er, whatever!

I wrote this way back in January of 2015, when I first started thinking that, what became iPhone X and iPhone XS, were the next inevitable steps forward in iPhone evolution:

Imagine a future iPhone where the screen goes to the edge on both sides, disappearing not at the curve but as the curve. Imagine an iPhone where the FaceTime camera and earpiece take up almost no space, and the screen reaches almost all the way to the top. And imagine an iPhone where the Home button is replaced by some new technology that can still allow for a physical escape to a known state, that can still scan fingerprints and authenticate, but that also lets the screen reach almost all the way to the bottom.

The crux of the idea was that people kept asking for a more modern 4-inch iPhone, but it occurred to me it wasn't the smaller screen size they really wanted, it was the smaller phone size, and if the screen went edge-to-edge, they could have both.

So, now, almost four years later, we have the regular-sized iPhone X and XS with an iPhone Plus-sized display, and the plus-sized iPhone XS Max with an even bigger display.

But what we don't have is that original, still beloved by some, 4-inch iPhone device size with what was previously the "regular" 4.7-inch iPhone screen.

We had the SE. We still haven't gotten the [SE] X.

The History of SE

In September of 2014 Apple announced the big and bigger iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. The reasons were simple. Once upon a time, Apple had sold an iPhone to pretty much everyone on AT&T or willing to switch to it, it moved on to Verizon, NTT DOCOMO, and China Mobile. It annexed the nearest neighbors to keep growing the business. Same way, Apple has sold an iPhone to pretty much everyone who wanted or was willing to put up with a 4-inch or smaller iPhone, and the business that was left was all… bigger.

But, while Apple introduced the 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch iPhone, and left the 4-inch iPhone 5s on the market, it didn't make a new 4-inch. So, people who liked the form factor were left to choose — stick with the older model or go up to a size they liked less just to get a processor and camera they liked more.

And it stayed that way throughout 2015, past the introduction of the still big and bigger iPhone 7, right up until March of 2016. Then, Apple announced the iPhone SE.

It had better internals than the iPhone 5s in same the form factor — equivalent to the iPhone 6s… but not to the then flagship 7. And it was emblematic of a deeper problem: Apple didn't nail the demand forecasting — the market research is does to figure out what people want in an iPhone. Demand for the SE, at least initially, far outstripped supply.

Apple seemed to think people only wanted a new 4-inch iPhone because of the lower price. But a significant number were buying it for the smaller size. But again, because it was still essentially a year old device, customers again had to choose between sticking with the older guts or go up to a size they liked less just to get a processor and camera they liked more.

When the next big change came, though, Apple seemed to have learned from the past: It introduced iPhone X but also updated the previous form factors with exactly the same, top-end processors and cameras. If you didn't want the next generation you could stick with the previous one without giving anything else up.

Apple even kept the iPhone SE on the market as well, at very bottom of the lineup. At least until this year.

The Killing

When Apple introduced the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR, the iPhone SE had to die. There were a few reasons for that.

Apple didn't just kill off the iPhone SE this year, it killed off its entire processor generation. Everything built on the A9 processor, including the iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, and even the 9.7-inch iPad (5th generation). Apple's A8 is still sold in the iPad mini 4, iPod Touch, Apple TV 4, and HomePod. But two of those aren't mainline computing devices and the others… are almost abandonware at this point.

The market has been steadily moving away from smaller screens. Maybe not for some and their tech circles on Twitter, but for most of the world where the phone can be and sometimes has to be a primary or only computing device. For a vast number of people, fitting phones into super tight jeans is a nice to have. A bigger screen so they can be more productive is a must have. And yes, even tiny people with tiny hands. Like a tablet is for everyone.

iOS has also been steadily moving away from smaller screens. Both the system and the apps can barely squeeze themselves onto the 320 point wide display any more. It still works, it's just getting less and less comfortable and even usable over time.

The rumors

But that was an old iPhone SE with the old design and old screen size. What about a new one?

According to the sources, Wistron is expected to start to ship the new iPhone SE -- which is expected to be more affordable than larger iPhones for many Indian consumers -- in the first quarter of next year.

With three new models in the pipeline for the second half of 2018, we believe Apple may have used up its development resources. Also, we think the firm will do all it can to avoid repeating the mistake of a shipment delay for the three new models. As such, we believe Apple is unlikely to have enough spare resources to develop a new iPhone model for launch in 2Q18.

Consomac reported that new iPhone SE was to be announced in May or June, but when we interviewed many iPhone casemakers exhibiting in Global Sources Mobile Electronics 2018 after in this respect, they told that the iPhone SE2 to be released in May will be of the same main body size as iPhone SE, the 3.5mm headphone jack will disappear, and Apple Pay by the NFC payment at the means of transportation and the store will become possible.

The front carries Touch ID, without change from iPhone SE, and HEIF or HEVC media captured is enabled by adopting A10 Fusion chip, and seems to be treated almost like iPhone 7's products.

It seemed to fit also to the Qi wireless charge, but the conclusive evidence that the back was glass was not provided.

On May 10, MacRumors cast doubt on just how old a potential new SE design might be:

MacRumors has obtained renders and alleged dimensions of the new iPhone SE from case maker Olixar, via online accessories store Mobile Fun, that suggest the device's notch will be approximately half as wide as the one on the iPhone X, almost certainly making it too slim to house facial recognition sensors.

On May 14, the Mac was Back — Mac Otakara that is — backing up the new design and more.

The Chinese accessory manufacturer which exhibited during the Japan IT Week Spring 2018 Mobile Expo said that production has not begun for the model which will be the successor of the iPhone SE therefore the possibility is low that it will be sold in the 2nd quarter of 2018, and that instead it will be during the latter half of the 3rd quarter of 2018 when the iPhone X・iPhone X Plus etc will be presented.

According to a certain glass manufacturer, there are 3 kinds of prototype glass, and wtih regard to the design, they are made to share the same features of having no Touch ID holes and their upper portion are cut into the shape of TrueDepth cameras.

On May 31, Sonny Dickson, who often gets pre-release iPhone parts and dummies out of China, tweeted:

The research note that was obtained and shared by Barron's was misinterpreted. It did not refer to the discontinuation of the iPhone SE, but rather suggested Apple has nixed plans to produce a second-generation iPhone SE, which has been called the "iPhone SE 2" in rumors. BlueFin Research did not mention the original iPhone SE model in its note and the information pertains solely to the iPhone SE 2.

But, of course, the iPhone SE — not SE 2 — was discontinued.

So, where does that leave us?

The Options

Despite Apple not updating iPhone SE in over two and a half years, both the size and design remain beloved by a segment of the customer base. How big or small that segment is unknown, though guesses likely depend on whether you include or exclude yourself from it. In other words, the more we want an iPhone SE 2, the more likely we are to think many, many other people do as well, and believe that market must be sizeble, because dammit, we want it!

We'll say things like, it's impossible to know how many people would buy a modern, small-sized iPhone because Apple isn't offering one, so people can't choose it. And even when you point out Apple isn't offering a 2-inch or 20-inch iPhone either, but there are other ways to determine those markets are undeniably small, no needs to risk billions of dollars testing them and failing hard first to find out, we totally won't listen to you.

But, let's just say the believers are right and the doubters are wrong, and Apple still has a new iPhone SE on the drawing board, and was simply waiting to get through the iPhone XS and XR launch to free up enough resources of a next spring release. Let's just say that for the sake of making this way more fun. What would the SE 2 be?

Because, the market for it is really two.

The first is the less-expensive market. Apple is kinda-sorta serving that in two ways already. One, iPhone 7 has taken iPhone SE's place at the very bottom end of the market. It isn't $349 but it is available from $499, with a bigger screen, better processor, and better camera than the SE. And two, iPhone XR is a less expensive next-as-in-10 generation iPhone that typically starts at $749 but Apple has been heavily promoting for as little as $449 with trade-in.

Rumor also has it Apple is bringing iPhone X back for the emerging markets, primarily India. It won't be cheap but it'll be cheaper than the XS.

If Apple wants to get back to having a $349 entry-level iPhone, damn the ASP — average selling price Wall Street currently holds so dear — and doesn't want to just wait and drop iPhone 7 to that slot next fall, and slightly spec-bumped iPhone SE 2 with iPhone 7-like internals could certainly do that.

But it wouldn't do anything for anyone who's been wanting an even smaller flagship. Other than, you know, really piss them off.

So, the second is smaller iPhone market. Apple only really serves that right now with iPhone XS, which squeezes a previously-reserved-for-Plus-sized screen and dual-camera system into a regular-sized device. For anyone who previously had eyes and heart saying yes to the Plus but mind and hands saying oh hell no, it was perfect.

With iPhone Max, Apple took a plus-sized device and made the screen even smaller. What Apple hasn't done, at least not yet, is take a regular sized screen and make the device even smaller.

An iPhone 6, 6s, 7, or 8 sized screen crammed edge-to-edge into an iPhone SE sized body, even if it has iPhone XR-style compromises like aluminum and a single camera system to do it. Given the cost of an A12 Bionic and TrueDepth camera system, it wouldn't slot in at $349, though, so it wouldn't please anyone wanting a new entry-level iPhone.

So, this is where we are: Rumors that Apple was making a new, entry-level iPhone SE for first-time buyers and emerging markets, something that was essentially an updated iPhone SE with slightly better specs but the same low, low price. Then, rumors that Apple was making a new, modern iPhone SE with and edge-to-edge display, camera notch and all, for people who want a fancy new iPhone but not one even as big as the XS. Now, nothing.

I wrote this way back in January of 2015, when I first started thinking that, what became iPhone X and iPhone XS, were the next inevitable steps forward in iPhone evolution:

Imagine a future iPhone where the screen goes to the edge on both sides, disappearing not at the curve but as the curve. Imagine an iPhone where the FaceTime camera and earpiece take up almost no space, and the screen reaches almost all the way to the top. And imagine an iPhone where the Home button is replaced by some new technology that can still allow for a physical escape to a known state, that can still scan fingerprints and authenticate, but that also lets the screen reach almost all the way to the bottom.

The crux of the idea was that people kept asking for a more modern 4-inch iPhone, but it occurred to me it wasn't the smaller screen size they really wanted, it was the smaller phone size, and if the screen went edge-to-edge, they could have both.

So, now, almost four years later, we have the regular-sized iPhone X and XS with an iPhone Plus-sized display, and the plus-sized iPhone XS Max with an even bigger display.

But what we don't have is that original, still beloved by some, 4-inch iPhone device size with what was previously the "regular" 4.7-inch iPhone screen.

We had the SE. We still haven't gotten the [SE] X.

The History of SE

In September of 2014 Apple announced the big and bigger iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. The reasons were simple. Once upon a time, Apple had sold an iPhone to pretty much everyone on AT&T or willing to switch to it, it moved on to Verizon, NTT DOCOMO, and China Mobile. It annexed the nearest neighbors to keep growing the business. Same way, Apple has sold an iPhone to pretty much everyone who wanted or was willing to put up with a 4-inch or smaller iPhone, and the business that was left was all… bigger.

But, while Apple introduced the 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch iPhone, and left the 4-inch iPhone 5s on the market, it didn't make a new 4-inch. So, people who liked the form factor were left to choose — stick with the older model or go up to a size they liked less just to get a processor and camera they liked more.

And it stayed that way throughout 2015, past the introduction of the still big and bigger iPhone 7, right up until March of 2016. Then, Apple announced the iPhone SE.

It had better internals than the iPhone 5s in same the form factor — equivalent to the iPhone 6s… but not to the then flagship 7. And it was emblematic of a deeper problem: Apple didn't nail the demand forecasting — the market research is does to figure out what people want in an iPhone. Demand for the SE, at least initially, far outstripped supply.

Apple seemed to think people only wanted a new 4-inch iPhone because of the lower price. But a significant number were buying it for the smaller size. But again, because it was still essentially a year old device, customers again had to choose between sticking with the older guts or go up to a size they liked less just to get a processor and camera they liked more.

When the next big change came, though, Apple seemed to have learned from the past: It introduced iPhone X but also updated the previous form factors with exactly the same, top-end processors and cameras. If you didn't want the next generation you could stick with the previous one without giving anything else up.

Apple even kept the iPhone SE on the market as well, at very bottom of the lineup. At least until this year.

The Killing

When Apple introduced the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR, the iPhone SE had to die. There were a few reasons for that.

Apple didn't just kill off the iPhone SE this year, it killed off its entire processor generation. Everything built on the A9 processor, including the iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, and even the 9.7-inch iPad (5th generation). Apple's A8 is still sold in the iPad mini 4, iPod Touch, Apple TV 4, and HomePod. But two of those aren't mainline computing devices and the others… are almost abandonware at this point.

The market has been steadily moving away from smaller screens. Maybe not for some and their tech circles on Twitter, but for most of the world where the phone can be and sometimes has to be a primary or only computing device. For a vast number of people, fitting phones into super tight jeans is a nice to have. A bigger screen so they can be more productive is a must have. And yes, even tiny people with tiny hands. Like a tablet is for everyone.

iOS has also been steadily moving away from smaller screens. Both the system and the apps can barely squeeze themselves onto the 320 point wide display any more. It still works, it's just getting less and less comfortable and even usable over time.

The rumors

But that was an old iPhone SE with the old design and old screen size. What about a new one?

According to the sources, Wistron is expected to start to ship the new iPhone SE -- which is expected to be more affordable than larger iPhones for many Indian consumers -- in the first quarter of next year.

With three new models in the pipeline for the second half of 2018, we believe Apple may have used up its development resources. Also, we think the firm will do all it can to avoid repeating the mistake of a shipment delay for the three new models. As such, we believe Apple is unlikely to have enough spare resources to develop a new iPhone model for launch in 2Q18.

Consomac reported that new iPhone SE was to be announced in May or June, but when we interviewed many iPhone casemakers exhibiting in Global Sources Mobile Electronics 2018 after in this respect, they told that the iPhone SE2 to be released in May will be of the same main body size as iPhone SE, the 3.5mm headphone jack will disappear, and Apple Pay by the NFC payment at the means of transportation and the store will become possible.

The front carries Touch ID, without change from iPhone SE, and HEIF or HEVC media captured is enabled by adopting A10 Fusion chip, and seems to be treated almost like iPhone 7's products.

It seemed to fit also to the Qi wireless charge, but the conclusive evidence that the back was glass was not provided.

On May 10, MacRumors cast doubt on just how old a potential new SE design might be:

MacRumors has obtained renders and alleged dimensions of the new iPhone SE from case maker Olixar, via online accessories store Mobile Fun, that suggest the device's notch will be approximately half as wide as the one on the iPhone X, almost certainly making it too slim to house facial recognition sensors.

On May 14, the Mac was Back — Mac Otakara that is — backing up the new design and more.

The Chinese accessory manufacturer which exhibited during the Japan IT Week Spring 2018 Mobile Expo said that production has not begun for the model which will be the successor of the iPhone SE therefore the possibility is low that it will be sold in the 2nd quarter of 2018, and that instead it will be during the latter half of the 3rd quarter of 2018 when the iPhone X・iPhone X Plus etc will be presented.

According to a certain glass manufacturer, there are 3 kinds of prototype glass, and wtih regard to the design, they are made to share the same features of having no Touch ID holes and their upper portion are cut into the shape of TrueDepth cameras.

On May 31, Sonny Dickson, who often gets pre-release iPhone parts and dummies out of China, tweeted:

The research note that was obtained and shared by Barron's was misinterpreted. It did not refer to the discontinuation of the iPhone SE, but rather suggested Apple has nixed plans to produce a second-generation iPhone SE, which has been called the "iPhone SE 2" in rumors. BlueFin Research did not mention the original iPhone SE model in its note and the information pertains solely to the iPhone SE 2.

But, of course, the iPhone SE — not SE 2 — was discontinued.

So, where does that leave us?

The Options

Despite Apple not updating iPhone SE in over two and a half years, both the size and design remain beloved by a segment of the customer base. How big or small that segment is unknown, though guesses likely depend on whether you include or exclude yourself from it. In other words, the more we want an iPhone SE 2, the more likely we are to think many, many other people do as well, and believe that market must be sizeble, because dammit, we want it!

We'll say things like, it's impossible to know how many people would buy a modern, small-sized iPhone because Apple isn't offering one, so people can't choose it. And even when you point out Apple isn't offering a 2-inch or 20-inch iPhone either, but there are other ways to determine those markets are undeniably small, no needs to risk billions of dollars testing them and failing hard first to find out, we totally won't listen to you.

But, let's just say the believers are right and the doubters are wrong, and Apple still has a new iPhone SE on the drawing board, and was simply waiting to get through the iPhone XS and XR launch to free up enough resources of a next spring release. Let's just say that for the sake of making this way more fun. What would the SE 2 be?

Because, the market for it is really two.

The first is the less-expensive market. Apple is kinda-sorta serving that in two ways already. One, iPhone 7 has taken iPhone SE's place at the very bottom end of the market. It isn't $349 but it is available from $499, with a bigger screen, better processor, and better camera than the SE. And two, iPhone XR is a less expensive next-as-in-10 generation iPhone that typically starts at $749 but Apple has been heavily promoting for as little as $449 with trade-in.

Rumor also has it Apple is bringing iPhone X back for the emerging markets, primarily India. It won't be cheap but it'll be cheaper than the XS.

If Apple wants to get back to having a $349 entry-level iPhone, damn the ASP — average selling price Wall Street currently holds so dear — and doesn't want to just wait and drop iPhone 7 to that slot next fall, and slightly spec-bumped iPhone SE 2 with iPhone 7-like internals could certainly do that.

But it wouldn't do anything for anyone who's been wanting an even smaller flagship. Other than, you know, really piss them off.

So, the second is smaller iPhone market. Apple only really serves that right now with iPhone XS, which squeezes a previously-reserved-for-Plus-sized screen and dual-camera system into a regular-sized device. For anyone who previously had eyes and heart saying yes to the Plus but mind and hands saying oh hell no, it was perfect.

With iPhone Max, Apple took a plus-sized device and made the screen even smaller. What Apple hasn't done, at least not yet, is take a regular sized screen and make the device even smaller.

An iPhone 6, 6s, 7, or 8 sized screen crammed edge-to-edge into an iPhone SE sized body, even if it has iPhone XR-style compromises like aluminum and a single camera system to do it. Given the cost of an A12 Bionic and TrueDepth camera system, it wouldn't slot in at $349, though, so it wouldn't please anyone wanting a new entry-level iPhone.

So, this is where we are: Rumors that Apple was making a new, entry-level iPhone SE for first-time buyers and emerging markets, something that was essentially an updated iPhone SE with slightly better specs but the same low, low price. Then, rumors that Apple was making a new, modern iPhone SE with and edge-to-edge display, camera notch and all, for people who want a fancy new iPhone but not one even as big as the XS. Now, nothing.

Apple has announced a major new Austin campus, as well as new facilities in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City, and expansion across the United States including Pittsburgh, New York and Boulder, Colorado.

It's not just about Cupertino and the South Bay Area of Northern California anymore. Well, it never really was, not for a long time, but Apple's U.S. footprint will, officially, be getting bigger and more widespread over the next few years.

Apple today announced a major expansion of its operations in Austin, including an investment of $1 billion to build a new campus in North Austin. The company also announced plans to establish new sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City and expand in cities across the United States including Pittsburgh, New York and Boulder, Colorado over the next three years, with the potential for additional expansion elsewhere in the US over time.

Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, had this to say:

Apple is proud to bring new investment, jobs and opportunity to cities across the United States and to significantly deepen our quarter-century partnership with the city and people of Austin. Talent, creativity and tomorrow's breakthrough ideas aren't limited by region or zip code, and, with this new expansion, we're redoubling our commitment to cultivating the high-tech sector and workforce nationwide.

The new Auston facility won't just be for support, logistics, and operations either:

Apple's newest Austin campus will be located less than a mile from its existing facilities. The 133-acre campus will initially accommodate 5,000 additional employees, with the capacity to grow to 15,000, and is expected to make Apple the largest private employer in Austin.

Jobs created at the new campus will include a broad range of functions including engineering, R&D, operations, finance, sales and customer support. At 6,200 people, Austin already represents the largest population of Apple employees outside Cupertino.

Apple has often kept it's non-Infinite Loop, non-Apple Park sites as secret as it's kept its product design and development work but, at a certain scale, that's just not feasible. And sometimes, for optics, it's also sub-optimal.

So, it's good to see Apple opening up about some of this, especially as we start getting into the next decade of products and services.

Apple has announced a major new Austin campus, as well as new facilities in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City, and expansion across the United States including Pittsburgh, New York and Boulder, Colorado.

It's not just about Cupertino and the South Bay Area of Northern California anymore. Well, it never really was, not for a long time, but Apple's U.S. footprint will, officially, be getting bigger and more widespread over the next few years.

Apple today announced a major expansion of its operations in Austin, including an investment of $1 billion to build a new campus in North Austin. The company also announced plans to establish new sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City and expand in cities across the United States including Pittsburgh, New York and Boulder, Colorado over the next three years, with the potential for additional expansion elsewhere in the US over time.

Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, had this to say:

Apple is proud to bring new investment, jobs and opportunity to cities across the United States and to significantly deepen our quarter-century partnership with the city and people of Austin. Talent, creativity and tomorrow's breakthrough ideas aren't limited by region or zip code, and, with this new expansion, we're redoubling our commitment to cultivating the high-tech sector and workforce nationwide.

The new Auston facility won't just be for support, logistics, and operations either:

Apple's newest Austin campus will be located less than a mile from its existing facilities. The 133-acre campus will initially accommodate 5,000 additional employees, with the capacity to grow to 15,000, and is expected to make Apple the largest private employer in Austin.

Jobs created at the new campus will include a broad range of functions including engineering, R&D, operations, finance, sales and customer support. At 6,200 people, Austin already represents the largest population of Apple employees outside Cupertino.

Apple has often kept it's non-Infinite Loop, non-Apple Park sites as secret as it's kept its product design and development work but, at a certain scale, that's just not feasible. And sometimes, for optics, it's also sub-optimal.

So, it's good to see Apple opening up about some of this, especially as we start getting into the next decade of products and services.

Apple's Hour of Code lets children — and parents! — discover the joys, challenges, and limitless potential of programming.

Google gets a lot of attention and even affection for giving away free services in exchange for our personal, private data. Apple doesn't want any of that. When you buy something from Apple, just like stickers and cables come in the box, hundreds of millions of dollars of educational programing and probably billions in free apps and services, everything you need to start exploring code and photography and video and music and much, much, more also comes invisibly in that box.

If you think Apple products are too expensive, this is where some of that money goes, so you should absolutely go, get in on all the free classes and training, and take that money back. Even if you've never bought an Apple product you can still take all of it, all for free.

Hour of Code workshops is one of the most prominent examples. Apple's been participating in the event for a few years now, originally using web-based tools and techniques but, more recently focusing on its still newish, free Swift Playgrounds app for iPad, and all the free lessons its been releasing to go with it.

Apple's been doing Hour of Code for a few of years now. Last year, the company introduced its Swift Playgrounds to the mix. With new and improved lessons to go with it, and the ability to control robots — yes, robots! — it makes the same kinds of code used to create next-generation iPhone, iPad, and Mac apps not just accessible to everyone, but relatable.

For the last couple of years I've gone to my local Apple Store with my school-aged god kids to sit in on Hour of Code. This year, well… I'll get to that in a minute.

In stores with the new Forums, kids and their parents gather around the giant displays, on the geometric seating, and wait for the pre-prepped iPads to be handed out. In older school stores, tables and chairs serve the exact same purpose.

Way back in the first year, one of the hour-long workshop consisted of a series of code-based puzzles the kids needed to solve. The puzzles used characters and imagery from popular games like Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies. Instead of focusing on the nuts and bolts of coding and forcing kids to write brackets and if statements, however, the children were asked to build pre-created modules, much like an Automator or Workflow module. They simply dragged blocks of code from the Code.org sidebar to the main canvas — code that told their on-screen characters to move or turn, as well as how much or how often.

At some of the bigger stores, Apple also brings in local developers to work with and inspire the children. This year I went to Apple Laval and a couple of the developers from Budge Studios, famous for its kids games and the new Transformers: Bumblebee game, were there to answer questions before the hour began, and to work with the kids until well after it ended.

In previous years, my god kids have asked "Why couldn't it be two hours of code?!" This year, I saw several kids say the same thing. Including a large amount of young girls, which all sorts of programs from App Camp for Girls to Girls Can Code have been working for years to provide more exposure to and opportunities for coding experience.

And their teachers. Because Apple doesn't just do the yearly Hour of Code. It also has a program called Field Trips where entire classes can come in and learn. According to the staff of the local French elementary school I spoke to, it's a huge benefit to them because they didn't yet have a coding program in house.

I hadn't realized this but not all of the material had previously been available in languages other than English but, as Apple has become more and more involved, not just Swift Playgrounds but a ton of the supplemental course material has been made available in a much wider range of languages, with more coming every year.

Hour of Code happens for a couple of weeks once a year but Apple hosts free lessons and free training on coding for kids and adults all year long. In fact, it has a fairly new course on prototyping that's straight out of some of my favorite WWDC sessions past. I can't believe it's in the stores but I'm so delighted it is.

If you don't have an Apple Store near you, you can still download the free Swift Playgrounds app and go through all the free course material. If you work in a school, Apple also has free course material available for both of its initiatives, Everyone can Code and Everyone can create.

It's not just one of Apple's biggest products, it's one of the least know and least taken advantage of, especially when it comes to things like Field Trips for schools and Apple Camp for kids, so make sure you let your friends know, let your schools know, let everyone know. Pick some classes, get some people together, and go, go go.

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Apple's Hour of Code lets children — and parents! — discover the joys, challenges, and limitless potential of programming.

Google gets a lot of attention and even affection for giving away free services in exchange for our personal, private data. Apple doesn't want any of that. When you buy something from Apple, just like stickers and cables come in the box, hundreds of millions of dollars of educational programing and probably billions in free apps and services, everything you need to start exploring code and photography and video and music and much, much, more also comes invisibly in that box.

If you think Apple products are too expensive, this is where some of that money goes, so you should absolutely go, get in on all the free classes and training, and take that money back. Even if you've never bought an Apple product you can still take all of it, all for free.

Hour of Code workshops is one of the most prominent examples. Apple's been participating in the event for a few years now, originally using web-based tools and techniques but, more recently focusing on its still newish, free Swift Playgrounds app for iPad, and all the free lessons its been releasing to go with it.

Apple's been doing Hour of Code for a few of years now. Last year, the company introduced its Swift Playgrounds to the mix. With new and improved lessons to go with it, and the ability to control robots — yes, robots! — it makes the same kinds of code used to create next-generation iPhone, iPad, and Mac apps not just accessible to everyone, but relatable.

For the last couple of years I've gone to my local Apple Store with my school-aged god kids to sit in on Hour of Code. This year, well… I'll get to that in a minute.

In stores with the new Forums, kids and their parents gather around the giant displays, on the geometric seating, and wait for the pre-prepped iPads to be handed out. In older school stores, tables and chairs serve the exact same purpose.

Way back in the first year, one of the hour-long workshop consisted of a series of code-based puzzles the kids needed to solve. The puzzles used characters and imagery from popular games like Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies. Instead of focusing on the nuts and bolts of coding and forcing kids to write brackets and if statements, however, the children were asked to build pre-created modules, much like an Automator or Workflow module. They simply dragged blocks of code from the Code.org sidebar to the main canvas — code that told their on-screen characters to move or turn, as well as how much or how often.

At some of the bigger stores, Apple also brings in local developers to work with and inspire the children. This year I went to Apple Laval and a couple of the developers from Budge Studios, famous for its kids games and the new Transformers: Bumblebee game, were there to answer questions before the hour began, and to work with the kids until well after it ended.

In previous years, my god kids have asked "Why couldn't it be two hours of code?!" This year, I saw several kids say the same thing. Including a large amount of young girls, which all sorts of programs from App Camp for Girls to Girls Can Code have been working for years to provide more exposure to and opportunities for coding experience.

And their teachers. Because Apple doesn't just do the yearly Hour of Code. It also has a program called Field Trips where entire classes can come in and learn. According to the staff of the local French elementary school I spoke to, it's a huge benefit to them because they didn't yet have a coding program in house.

I hadn't realized this but not all of the material had previously been available in languages other than English but, as Apple has become more and more involved, not just Swift Playgrounds but a ton of the supplemental course material has been made available in a much wider range of languages, with more coming every year.

Hour of Code happens for a couple of weeks once a year but Apple hosts free lessons and free training on coding for kids and adults all year long. In fact, it has a fairly new course on prototyping that's straight out of some of my favorite WWDC sessions past. I can't believe it's in the stores but I'm so delighted it is.

If you don't have an Apple Store near you, you can still download the free Swift Playgrounds app and go through all the free course material. If you work in a school, Apple also has free course material available for both of its initiatives, Everyone can Code and Everyone can create.

It's not just one of Apple's biggest products, it's one of the least know and least taken advantage of, especially when it comes to things like Field Trips for schools and Apple Camp for kids, so make sure you let your friends know, let your schools know, let everyone know. Pick some classes, get some people together, and go, go go.

djay, the groundbreaking, multiple Apple Design Award-winning music mixing app by Algoriddim for iPhone and iPad, is getting the biggest update in its history. And update is probably too small a word for it.

Over the years, djay fractured into free and Pro, audio and video versions, and it was a lot not just to keep track of but to maintain. Now, all of those versions are merging, yes like Voltron, into a single iOS app that simply, consistently, has it all.

It's a free download for iPhone and iPad in its classic form which includes so much functionality — way more than many of the paid versions past — that I'm guessing the casual and simply mix-curious will not only be satisfied with it, they'll be ecstatic.

Here's what you get for free:

Classic Mode - turntable view: Just two turntables and a mixer, with spinning discs that react just like vinyl does. Virtual grooves are individually rendered for every song on djay's virtual records. It allows to quickly identify breaks within a song, as if it was real vinyl fresh off the press. Load two tracks and fade between the two, and apply one of five free FX to the music on each deck.

Automix Mode - simple mix view: The new Automix view allows you to mix your favorite music with the simple tap of a button. djay creates perfect sounding mixes from one song to the next and finds optimal transition points through its machine learning based Automix AI engine. Mixing songs has never been easier.

Seamless Spotify Integration - mix millions of songs: Use the free version of djay with a Spotify Premium account to mix millions of songs instantly. Using Match, an innovative feature that recommends songs that go well with what the DJ is currently playing, Spotify integration in djay provides a list of matching songs based on danceability, BPM, key, and music style. This allows you to find the perfect next song to mix, as well as to discover new music based on your personal taste. And thanks to the new djay's enhanced integration, you can now save songs to your Spotify collection or playlists right from within djay. Using Automix AI users can trigger automatic, beat-matched transitions between their favorite songs on Spotify with the simple tap of a button.

Hardware Integration - enhanced control: Connect one of the official djay controllers (Reloop Mixon 4, Beatpad and Beatpad 2, Mixtour, and Pioneer DJ WeGO4) for enhanced control of djay or upgrade to djay Pro from within the same app to use any class-compliant MIDI controller.

And, yeah, can Apple please beat the labels up until they let Apple Music integrate with stuff like this as well?

If you're a performer and/or a pro, you can get even more with the new subscription service. I know, I know, subscription fatigue and pile-up are real, but given how much is free, and how much value you can get on an ongoing basis, this one is more than just kinda clever.

Here's what you get with the Pro subscription:

Hundreds of samples and loops: The djay Pro subscription opens up access to over 1GB of audio loops from Loopmasters, samples from Future Loops, and video clips from DocOptic, along with 40+ professional audio FX from Sugar Bytes and various video FX. Get loops and sound packs from a wide range of popular genres such as Hip Hop, Deep House, EDM, and Trance, as well as more eclectic sounds from Ambient House, Electro Swing, or Jazz.... with more content to come for subscribed users.

Multiple screens and peripherals**: Thanks to the USB-C port, users can now connect multiple devices to their iPad Pro. This allows users to output the visual mix to their big screen while jamming with an external controller – an essential feature for DJs and performing artists.

Live performance and remixing: DJs wanting to spice up their sets can use the new sampler to record and sequence their loops during the mix. Those wanting to dive deeper into unique musical performance can load up the grid-based Looper with up to 48 loops, all time-stretched and perfectly matched to the beat in real-time.

Every sample in the new looper can be assigned a video clip that plays in time with the audio. And thus, with the power of the A12 Bionic chip, you can now mix up to ten videos in real-time. DJs and VJs can finally leave the laptop at home, and mix videos and visual loops, in real-time, right on their mobile device.

Advanced Automix AI: The advanced Automix mode allows users to automate their sets in advance with stunning transitions. Using machine learning and training sets from human DJs, Automix AI intelligently identifies rhythmic patterns and the best intro and outro sections of songs. Automix AI calculates optimal fade durations and automatically applies parameter changes to EQs and filters for a seamless transition. Users can fully customize their preferred mix settings and start the automix with a single tap.

Powerful Audio and Graphics Technology: djay's audio, graphics, and sync engines were rebuilt from the ground up to include support for Post-Fader FX, high resolution colored waveforms at a silky smooth 60 fps (120 fps on iPad Pro), beat-locked Sync Mode, sequenced playback of samples, advanced video mixing, and ultra-low latency.

Ableton Link : djay now has industry-standard Ableton Link for syncing tempo across compatible apps and devices on a shared network. Whether jamming with friends using desktop setups, or linking with other mobile apps, your tempo will be locked and flawless, even over Wi-Fi.

MIDI: Support for over 50 MIDI controllers from Pioneer DJ, Reloop, Numark, Denon DJ, and others out-of-the-box. Advanced MIDI learn system to map each control on users' hardware individually. Support for Bluetooth MIDI

The subscription costs $4.99 a month and there's a free 7-day trial so you can decide if it's really worth it for you. If not, great, stick to the wildly encompassing free version.

Also, if you previously bought djay Pro, either on sale or at full price, and now you're looking for your seething at the mere thought someone else might get so much for free, put down your torch and pitchfork, and enjoy this:

Existing customers who have previously purchased any djay version on iOS are eligible for a special upgrade price of $9.99 for the first year. This is a discount of $30 or 83% off the standard price, which is a reward for previous customers' loyalty and support.

If you're all "I'll do you one better — why subscription?!" then check out Algoriddim's blog post on the subject:

With smartphones and tablets being so ubiquitous now, we want to once again open up DJing to even more people than ever before. We decided to make djay a free download again. Moreover, in the same way that djay made mixing music accessible to the masses, we wanted to do the same for creating music… music production relies on access to an extensive library of content.

For a high quality and seamless experience we have licensed content from world-class artists and labels. Moving to in-app subscription gives us an easy way to add more packs, more sounds, more videos, in a way that ensures everyone has access to the same downloads, without further cost barrier. Customers pay monthly to access every official download as they're added.
I've said this before and I'll say it again: I have absolutely no musical talent but Djay is the app that makes me regret that like no other. It's just so damn good. If you've always wanted to try out mixing — and now, producing — or you want to get your kids into it, download the new Djay now. It's stupefying to me how much they're giving away for free.

And if you are or want to go Pro, this is one of those beautiful confluences of features and content that's beyond worth it. Hell, even if you just host or attend parties more than once a month, it's beyond worth it. For less than the price of a fancy adult beverage you'll get to be the one that rocks the house and wows everyone in the room. In AI style.

djay, the groundbreaking, multiple Apple Design Award-winning music mixing app by Algoriddim for iPhone and iPad, is getting the biggest update in its history. And update is probably too small a word for it.

Over the years, djay fractured into free and Pro, audio and video versions, and it was a lot not just to keep track of but to maintain. Now, all of those versions are merging, yes like Voltron, into a single iOS app that simply, consistently, has it all.

It's a free download for iPhone and iPad in its classic form which includes so much functionality — way more than many of the paid versions past — that I'm guessing the casual and simply mix-curious will not only be satisfied with it, they'll be ecstatic.

Here's what you get for free:

Classic Mode - turntable view: Just two turntables and a mixer, with spinning discs that react just like vinyl does. Virtual grooves are individually rendered for every song on djay's virtual records. It allows to quickly identify breaks within a song, as if it was real vinyl fresh off the press. Load two tracks and fade between the two, and apply one of five free FX to the music on each deck.

Automix Mode - simple mix view: The new Automix view allows you to mix your favorite music with the simple tap of a button. djay creates perfect sounding mixes from one song to the next and finds optimal transition points through its machine learning based Automix AI engine. Mixing songs has never been easier.

Seamless Spotify Integration - mix millions of songs: Use the free version of djay with a Spotify Premium account to mix millions of songs instantly. Using Match, an innovative feature that recommends songs that go well with what the DJ is currently playing, Spotify integration in djay provides a list of matching songs based on danceability, BPM, key, and music style. This allows you to find the perfect next song to mix, as well as to discover new music based on your personal taste. And thanks to the new djay's enhanced integration, you can now save songs to your Spotify collection or playlists right from within djay. Using Automix AI users can trigger automatic, beat-matched transitions between their favorite songs on Spotify with the simple tap of a button.

Hardware Integration - enhanced control: Connect one of the official djay controllers (Reloop Mixon 4, Beatpad and Beatpad 2, Mixtour, and Pioneer DJ WeGO4) for enhanced control of djay or upgrade to djay Pro from within the same app to use any class-compliant MIDI controller.

And, yeah, can Apple please beat the labels up until they let Apple Music integrate with stuff like this as well?

If you're a performer and/or a pro, you can get even more with the new subscription service. I know, I know, subscription fatigue and pile-up are real, but given how much is free, and how much value you can get on an ongoing basis, this one is more than just kinda clever.

Here's what you get with the Pro subscription:

Hundreds of samples and loops: The djay Pro subscription opens up access to over 1GB of audio loops from Loopmasters, samples from Future Loops, and video clips from DocOptic, along with 40+ professional audio FX from Sugar Bytes and various video FX. Get loops and sound packs from a wide range of popular genres such as Hip Hop, Deep House, EDM, and Trance, as well as more eclectic sounds from Ambient House, Electro Swing, or Jazz.... with more content to come for subscribed users.

Multiple screens and peripherals**: Thanks to the USB-C port, users can now connect multiple devices to their iPad Pro. This allows users to output the visual mix to their big screen while jamming with an external controller – an essential feature for DJs and performing artists.

Live performance and remixing: DJs wanting to spice up their sets can use the new sampler to record and sequence their loops during the mix. Those wanting to dive deeper into unique musical performance can load up the grid-based Looper with up to 48 loops, all time-stretched and perfectly matched to the beat in real-time.

Every sample in the new looper can be assigned a video clip that plays in time with the audio. And thus, with the power of the A12 Bionic chip, you can now mix up to ten videos in real-time. DJs and VJs can finally leave the laptop at home, and mix videos and visual loops, in real-time, right on their mobile device.

Advanced Automix AI: The advanced Automix mode allows users to automate their sets in advance with stunning transitions. Using machine learning and training sets from human DJs, Automix AI intelligently identifies rhythmic patterns and the best intro and outro sections of songs. Automix AI calculates optimal fade durations and automatically applies parameter changes to EQs and filters for a seamless transition. Users can fully customize their preferred mix settings and start the automix with a single tap.

Powerful Audio and Graphics Technology: djay's audio, graphics, and sync engines were rebuilt from the ground up to include support for Post-Fader FX, high resolution colored waveforms at a silky smooth 60 fps (120 fps on iPad Pro), beat-locked Sync Mode, sequenced playback of samples, advanced video mixing, and ultra-low latency.

Ableton Link : djay now has industry-standard Ableton Link for syncing tempo across compatible apps and devices on a shared network. Whether jamming with friends using desktop setups, or linking with other mobile apps, your tempo will be locked and flawless, even over Wi-Fi.

MIDI: Support for over 50 MIDI controllers from Pioneer DJ, Reloop, Numark, Denon DJ, and others out-of-the-box. Advanced MIDI learn system to map each control on users' hardware individually. Support for Bluetooth MIDI

The subscription costs $4.99 a month and there's a free 7-day trial so you can decide if it's really worth it for you. If not, great, stick to the wildly encompassing free version.

Also, if you previously bought djay Pro, either on sale or at full price, and now you're looking for your seething at the mere thought someone else might get so much for free, put down your torch and pitchfork, and enjoy this:

Existing customers who have previously purchased any djay version on iOS are eligible for a special upgrade price of $9.99 for the first year. This is a discount of $30 or 83% off the standard price, which is a reward for previous customers' loyalty and support.

If you're all "I'll do you one better — why subscription?!" then check out Algoriddim's blog post on the subject:

With smartphones and tablets being so ubiquitous now, we want to once again open up DJing to even more people than ever before. We decided to make djay a free download again. Moreover, in the same way that djay made mixing music accessible to the masses, we wanted to do the same for creating music… music production relies on access to an extensive library of content.

For a high quality and seamless experience we have licensed content from world-class artists and labels. Moving to in-app subscription gives us an easy way to add more packs, more sounds, more videos, in a way that ensures everyone has access to the same downloads, without further cost barrier. Customers pay monthly to access every official download as they're added.
I've said this before and I'll say it again: I have absolutely no musical talent but Djay is the app that makes me regret that like no other. It's just so damn good. If you've always wanted to try out mixing — and now, producing — or you want to get your kids into it, download the new Djay now. It's stupefying to me how much they're giving away for free.

And if you are or want to go Pro, this is one of those beautiful confluences of features and content that's beyond worth it. Hell, even if you just host or attend parties more than once a month, it's beyond worth it. For less than the price of a fancy adult beverage you'll get to be the one that rocks the house and wows everyone in the room. In AI style.

]]>Wed, 12 Dec 2018 15:00:25 +0000Rene Ritchie49829.pjlxw0 at https://www.imore.comhttps://www.imore.com/djay-merges-voltron-goes-subscription-gives-so-much-away-free#commentsMacBook vs. Air vs. Pro: This is the one you should buy!https://www.imore.com/macbook-vs-air-vs-pro-one-you-should-buy

The old grid is gone. The old grid is dead. But I'd argue there's a new, almost as simple grid that's taken its place and can help you whittle down to your ideal MacBook pretty quick.

Once upon a time, Steve Jobs drew quadrants on a slide and, if you wanted a new notebook rather than desktop, all you had to decide between was consumer and pro, for a brief time, between MacBook and MacBook Pro. Then he pulled a MacBook Air out of a manilla envelope and things got — and stayed — more complicated. Today, with an old Air and new, a 12-inch and several levels of Pro, it can seem downright confusing.

The New Grid

The old grid is gone. The old grid is dead. But I'd argue there's a new, almost as simple grid that's taken its place and can help you whittle down to your ideal MacBook pretty quick.

If you just want a MacBook you can take pretty much anywhere and do pretty much anything with, then you've got the new baseline, the new MacBook Air.

If you absolutely have to have a MacBook but just can't or won't pay over $1000 for it, you have the old Air still in the lineup.

If maximum portability is more important to you and you're willing to pay a premium for the thinnest and the lightest, but not too much of a premium, then there's the m3 12-inch MacBook.

If you want a little more power as well as portability, and premium is no problem, then you can go up to the i7 12-inch MacBook Pro.

If you need power more than portability, and you're willing to pay a premium for that, you've got the MacBook Pro, starting with the 2017 13-inch sans TouchBar.

If you demand maximum power and performance no matter the premium, then you can go all the way up to the just-released 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro with mobile Vega graphics.

Yes, there still lots of room to fuss with exact processor, memory, and storage options in between, but that part has kinda always been true.

Which is why grids only ever really took us so far. So, let's try something better.

MacBook Air: The Baseline

If you need a new MacBook and that's all you really know or care about, if you're a student or teacher, if you want to work at home and at coffee shops, if you mostly use the web and documents, photos and messaging, get the MacBook Air.

It's not only the least expensive modern MacBook in Apple's lineup, it's also the simplest. You pick your color, you pick your storage, you pick your memory, and that's it. It's almost iPad simple for people who just want a Mac without all the fuss. And that's what the MacBook Air is for — everyone who wants a traditional computer without the traditional computer hassles.

Here's what you get:

It has Intel's Amber Lake processor, which is a more mobile-friendly, Y-series version of Coffee Lake, so it's the latest generation. It's just doesn't run quite as fast or as hot. And it has two USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports, one for power when you need it, and the other or both for just about everything else… though you'll like need a USB-A adapter or two as well, at least for the foreseeable future.

It's got a Retina display, which means a person with average vision from an average working distance can't see pixels, just sharp text and graphics, though it's not quite as bright or as colorful as the pro displays.

It's also got Apple's latest T2 Security Chip, which makes it harder for anyone to steal or infect your stuff, and Touch ID, which makes it easier for you to unlock and authorize Apple Pay.

That entry-level starts at $1199. And yeah, that's more expensive than the old model, which is still around for $999. But it's a hundred bucks less expensive than that old model was at launch, or than any 13-inch Air has ever been at launch, especially the original which, ten years ago, started at $1799.

With that entry-level, you get 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, which is probably fine if you do and keep a lot of your work online, and especially if you use Safari instead of a ton of Chrome tabs and apps.

If you want or need more breathing room, you can go to 16GB of RAM or an extra $200, and to 256 or 512GB, or 1.5TB of storage, for an extra 200, 400, and 1200 bucks respectively. You've got to never want to clean up or offload your Mac to shell out for that much storage on an Air, though.

If that's priced outside your reach, and you still really want a Mac, there is that previous generation Air for $999. It lacks a Retina display and a modern processor and ports, but it does have USB-A and even an SD Card slot. You can also keep an eye out for discounts and sales, because there can be good hones, and refurbs. Or, if you're open to alternatives, the iPad or iPad Pro.

Otherwise, the new MacBook Air really is the new normal for everyone who, like I said, just wants a new Mac to take with them everywhere and do pretty much everything you need doing.

12-inch MacBook: The Ultralight

If you need a new MacBook and even the Air isn't quite thin or light enough for you, if you're an executive or manager, you're always on planes or walking trade shows, if your workload is light so you want your Mac to be the same, and you're willing and able to pay a bit more to carry a bit less, then you want the 12-inch MacBook.

Here's what you give up:

Because the MacBook is smaller, the screen is also smaller — by an inch and change, and the resolution is 2304 by 1440 instead of 2560 by 1600 pixels. The pixels are also slightly less colorful at standard instead of full sRGB.

It's got a couple hours less battery life — 10 for web browsing instead of 12, and only one USB-C port, no Thunderbolt 3 included.

It's also got a 480p FaceTime camera, which, yeah, is straight out of… I don't know… 2008? The keyboard is also gen 2 instead of gen 3, which means no inner membrane. And, yeah, no Touch ID.

Here's what you gain:

It's up to a tenth of an inch thinner and almost three-quarters of a pound lighter. And it makes the Air look positively Pro-plump by comparison.

You also get processor options. Apple didn't bump them up to Amber Lake like the new Air, so it's still the previous generation Kaby Lake Y-Series. And the entry-level comes with an m3, which is about as low as you can go. There's an i5, though, which is last year's version of the i5 in the Air. But there's also an i7, which can give you even better performance than the Air and in a package that's even more portable. If you're willing and able to pay for it.

The MacBook starts at $1299, and for that extra hundred bucks over the Air you get the m3, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage.

If you want performance as well, you can go to the i5 for an extra 100 bucks or top it out with the i7 for an extra 250.

Yeah, it's a lot to pay for a little, little Mac, but if you simply don't want to carry any more Mac than you absolutely have to, and maximum portability is worth the premium, then the 12-inch MacBook is for you.

13-inch MacBook Pro: The Workstation

If you need a new MacBook but you need it to do quote unquote real work bracket TM close bracket, if you're a pro photographer, videographer, audio producer or engineer, designer or coder, if time is money and power is worth a premium, then you want the MacBook Pro.

Here's what you give up:

It's squared more than wedge-shaped like the Air, and a quarter-pound heavier. It's also got 10 instead of 12-hours of web browsing battery life. And, at the lowest-end — well, low-end for a Pro — the 13-inch without the Touch Bar, also has no Touch ID. And while it has full U-series processor options, they're the previous generation Kaby Lake, not the current generation Coffee Lake.

All the higher end versions, though, have Touch ID and Coffee Lake.

Here's what you get:

The 13-inch screen is the same size and density as the Air, but 200 nits brighter and with a wide P3 gamut, it's much more colorful.

Processor options are… well… buckle yourself in: You can get that aforementioned dual core Kaby Lake U-series version without a Touch Bar starting at $1299 for the i5 or, for an extra 300 bucks, i7.

You can also get quad core Coffee Lake with a Touch Bar and Touch ID in either i5 or, again for an extra 300 bucks, i7. And, if you're willing to go up to the 15-inch, not only can you get a 2880-by-1800 screen, but 6-core Coffee Lake in either i7 or, for an extra 400 bucks i9.

It's a lot to pay but it's a lot of performance you're paying for.

For the 13-inch, you can go from 8GB of RAM to 16GB for an extra 200 bucks. For the no touch bar model, you can go from 128GB of storage to 256 or 512GB, or 1TB for an extra 200, 400, or 800 bucks. With the Touch Bar, from 256GB of storage to 512GB or to 1TB or 2TB for 200, 600, or 1400 bucks. For the 15-inch, you can go to 32GB of RAM for 400 bucks, 1, 2, or 4TB of storage for 400, 1200, or 3200 bucks. And to Pro Vega 16 or Pro Vega 20 graphics for 250 or 350 bucks.

That's a lot of options, and a lot of money, but if you're a hardcore, keyboard clacking, pixel pushing, RED rendering, code crunching, design daring doer, your time is worth more than money, and you'll pay just about anything for performance, then you want the MacBook Pro.

The old grid is gone. The old grid is dead. But I'd argue there's a new, almost as simple grid that's taken its place and can help you whittle down to your ideal MacBook pretty quick.

Once upon a time, Steve Jobs drew quadrants on a slide and, if you wanted a new notebook rather than desktop, all you had to decide between was consumer and pro, for a brief time, between MacBook and MacBook Pro. Then he pulled a MacBook Air out of a manilla envelope and things got — and stayed — more complicated. Today, with an old Air and new, a 12-inch and several levels of Pro, it can seem downright confusing.

The New Grid

The old grid is gone. The old grid is dead. But I'd argue there's a new, almost as simple grid that's taken its place and can help you whittle down to your ideal MacBook pretty quick.

If you just want a MacBook you can take pretty much anywhere and do pretty much anything with, then you've got the new baseline, the new MacBook Air.

If you absolutely have to have a MacBook but just can't or won't pay over $1000 for it, you have the old Air still in the lineup.

If maximum portability is more important to you and you're willing to pay a premium for the thinnest and the lightest, but not too much of a premium, then there's the m3 12-inch MacBook.

If you want a little more power as well as portability, and premium is no problem, then you can go up to the i7 12-inch MacBook Pro.

If you need power more than portability, and you're willing to pay a premium for that, you've got the MacBook Pro, starting with the 2017 13-inch sans TouchBar.

If you demand maximum power and performance no matter the premium, then you can go all the way up to the just-released 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro with mobile Vega graphics.

Yes, there still lots of room to fuss with exact processor, memory, and storage options in between, but that part has kinda always been true.

Which is why grids only ever really took us so far. So, let's try something better.

MacBook Air: The Baseline

If you need a new MacBook and that's all you really know or care about, if you're a student or teacher, if you want to work at home and at coffee shops, if you mostly use the web and documents, photos and messaging, get the MacBook Air.

It's not only the least expensive modern MacBook in Apple's lineup, it's also the simplest. You pick your color, you pick your storage, you pick your memory, and that's it. It's almost iPad simple for people who just want a Mac without all the fuss. And that's what the MacBook Air is for — everyone who wants a traditional computer without the traditional computer hassles.

Here's what you get:

It has Intel's Amber Lake processor, which is a more mobile-friendly, Y-series version of Coffee Lake, so it's the latest generation. It's just doesn't run quite as fast or as hot. And it has two USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports, one for power when you need it, and the other or both for just about everything else… though you'll like need a USB-A adapter or two as well, at least for the foreseeable future.

It's got a Retina display, which means a person with average vision from an average working distance can't see pixels, just sharp text and graphics, though it's not quite as bright or as colorful as the pro displays.

It's also got Apple's latest T2 Security Chip, which makes it harder for anyone to steal or infect your stuff, and Touch ID, which makes it easier for you to unlock and authorize Apple Pay.

That entry-level starts at $1199. And yeah, that's more expensive than the old model, which is still around for $999. But it's a hundred bucks less expensive than that old model was at launch, or than any 13-inch Air has ever been at launch, especially the original which, ten years ago, started at $1799.

With that entry-level, you get 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, which is probably fine if you do and keep a lot of your work online, and especially if you use Safari instead of a ton of Chrome tabs and apps.

If you want or need more breathing room, you can go to 16GB of RAM or an extra $200, and to 256 or 512GB, or 1.5TB of storage, for an extra 200, 400, and 1200 bucks respectively. You've got to never want to clean up or offload your Mac to shell out for that much storage on an Air, though.

If that's priced outside your reach, and you still really want a Mac, there is that previous generation Air for $999. It lacks a Retina display and a modern processor and ports, but it does have USB-A and even an SD Card slot. You can also keep an eye out for discounts and sales, because there can be good hones, and refurbs. Or, if you're open to alternatives, the iPad or iPad Pro.

Otherwise, the new MacBook Air really is the new normal for everyone who, like I said, just wants a new Mac to take with them everywhere and do pretty much everything you need doing.

12-inch MacBook: The Ultralight

If you need a new MacBook and even the Air isn't quite thin or light enough for you, if you're an executive or manager, you're always on planes or walking trade shows, if your workload is light so you want your Mac to be the same, and you're willing and able to pay a bit more to carry a bit less, then you want the 12-inch MacBook.

Here's what you give up:

Because the MacBook is smaller, the screen is also smaller — by an inch and change, and the resolution is 2304 by 1440 instead of 2560 by 1600 pixels. The pixels are also slightly less colorful at standard instead of full sRGB.

It's got a couple hours less battery life — 10 for web browsing instead of 12, and only one USB-C port, no Thunderbolt 3 included.

It's also got a 480p FaceTime camera, which, yeah, is straight out of… I don't know… 2008? The keyboard is also gen 2 instead of gen 3, which means no inner membrane. And, yeah, no Touch ID.

Here's what you gain:

It's up to a tenth of an inch thinner and almost three-quarters of a pound lighter. And it makes the Air look positively Pro-plump by comparison.

You also get processor options. Apple didn't bump them up to Amber Lake like the new Air, so it's still the previous generation Kaby Lake Y-Series. And the entry-level comes with an m3, which is about as low as you can go. There's an i5, though, which is last year's version of the i5 in the Air. But there's also an i7, which can give you even better performance than the Air and in a package that's even more portable. If you're willing and able to pay for it.

The MacBook starts at $1299, and for that extra hundred bucks over the Air you get the m3, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage.

If you want performance as well, you can go to the i5 for an extra 100 bucks or top it out with the i7 for an extra 250.

Yeah, it's a lot to pay for a little, little Mac, but if you simply don't want to carry any more Mac than you absolutely have to, and maximum portability is worth the premium, then the 12-inch MacBook is for you.

13-inch MacBook Pro: The Workstation

If you need a new MacBook but you need it to do quote unquote real work bracket TM close bracket, if you're a pro photographer, videographer, audio producer or engineer, designer or coder, if time is money and power is worth a premium, then you want the MacBook Pro.

Here's what you give up:

It's squared more than wedge-shaped like the Air, and a quarter-pound heavier. It's also got 10 instead of 12-hours of web browsing battery life. And, at the lowest-end — well, low-end for a Pro — the 13-inch without the Touch Bar, also has no Touch ID. And while it has full U-series processor options, they're the previous generation Kaby Lake, not the current generation Coffee Lake.

All the higher end versions, though, have Touch ID and Coffee Lake.

Here's what you get:

The 13-inch screen is the same size and density as the Air, but 200 nits brighter and with a wide P3 gamut, it's much more colorful.

Processor options are… well… buckle yourself in: You can get that aforementioned dual core Kaby Lake U-series version without a Touch Bar starting at $1299 for the i5 or, for an extra 300 bucks, i7.

You can also get quad core Coffee Lake with a Touch Bar and Touch ID in either i5 or, again for an extra 300 bucks, i7. And, if you're willing to go up to the 15-inch, not only can you get a 2880-by-1800 screen, but 6-core Coffee Lake in either i7 or, for an extra 400 bucks i9.

It's a lot to pay but it's a lot of performance you're paying for.

For the 13-inch, you can go from 8GB of RAM to 16GB for an extra 200 bucks. For the no touch bar model, you can go from 128GB of storage to 256 or 512GB, or 1TB for an extra 200, 400, or 800 bucks. With the Touch Bar, from 256GB of storage to 512GB or to 1TB or 2TB for 200, 600, or 1400 bucks. For the 15-inch, you can go to 32GB of RAM for 400 bucks, 1, 2, or 4TB of storage for 400, 1200, or 3200 bucks. And to Pro Vega 16 or Pro Vega 20 graphics for 250 or 350 bucks.

That's a lot of options, and a lot of money, but if you're a hardcore, keyboard clacking, pixel pushing, RED rendering, code crunching, design daring doer, your time is worth more than money, and you'll pay just about anything for performance, then you want the MacBook Pro.

Bloomberg claims Apple, Amazon, and over 30 U.S. companies were hit by malicious chips planted on motherboards used by Supermicro servers. Apple and Amazon claim Bloomberg has no idea what it's talking about.

Bloomberg Businessweek has dropped a bombshell: Chinese intelligence — agents of the People's Liberation Army — forced factories in China to add tiny spy chips to server boards being manufactured for industry-leading Super Micro, to be sold to industry giants like Apple and Amazon. Their boards and servers literally provide the hearts and minds for many of the world's data centers, large and small. And, the report says, they've been hacked at the hardware level.

December 11, 2018: Super Micro: No 'Big Hack' malicious chips found in motherboards

A third party audit of Super Micro motherboards, old and new, has found zero evidence of the 'big hack' hardware spy chips Bloomberg alleged were sold to Amazon, Apple, and dozens of other tech companies.

Computer hardware maker Super Micro Computer Inc told customers on Tuesday that an outside investigations firm had found no evidence of any malicious hardware in its current or older-model motherboards.

Given Apple and Amazon's strong denials and the lack of any corroborating reporting from other outlets like The Washington Post or the New York Times, this is looking worse and worse for Bloomberg.

October 7, 2018: Named source in "The Big Hack" has doubts about the story

A new episode of RISKY.BIZ reveals that the ' "Big Hack" technical source Joe Fitzpatrick has concerns about Bloomberg's reporting...'

Apple Vice President for Information Security George Stathakopoulos wrote in a letter to the Senate and House commerce committees that the company had repeatedly investigated and found no evidence for the main points in a Bloomberg Businessweek article published on Thursday, including that chips inside servers sold to Apple by Super Micro Computer Inc (SMCI.PK) allowed for backdoor transmissions to China.

"Apple's proprietary security tools are continuously scanning for precisely this kind of outbound traffic, as it indicates the existence of malware or other malicious activity. Nothing was ever found," he wrote in the letter provided to Reuters.

October 6, 2018: DHS says it has 'no reason to doubt statements' on Big Hack from Apple & Amazon

The Department of Homeland Security is aware of the media reports of a technology supply chain compromise. Like our partners in the UK, the National Cyber Security Centre, at this time we have no reason to doubt the statements from the companies named in the story. Information and communications technology supply chain security is core to DHS's cybersecurity mission and we are committed to the security and integrity of the technology on which Americans and others around the world increasingly rely. Just this month – National Cybersecurity Awareness Month – we launched several government-industry initiatives to develop near- and long-term solutions to manage risk posed by the complex challenges of increasingly global supply chains. These initiatives will build on existing partnerships with a wide range of technology companies to strengthen our nation's collective cybersecurity and risk management efforts.

October 5, 2018: Former Apple General Counsel, Bruce Sewell: Nobody at the FBI knew what the SuperMicro story was about

Bruce Sewell retired earlier this year after a long and successful career culminating in his time as Apple General Counsel. Here's what he had to say about the Super Micro story as reported by Bloomberg.

Apple's recently retired general counsel, Bruce Sewell, told Reuters he called the FBI's then-general counsel James Baker last year after being told by Bloomberg of an open investigation into Super Micro Computer Inc , a hardware maker whose products Bloomberg said were implanted with malicious Chinese chips.

"I got on the phone with him personally and said, 'Do you know anything about this?," Sewell said of his conversation with Baker. "He said, 'I've never heard of this, but give me 24 hours to make sure.' He called me back 24 hours later and said 'Nobody here knows what this story is about.'"

According to Bloomberg, the hardware hack was discovered when Amazon decided to buy Super Micro customer, and streaming video disruptor Elemental Technologies, but first had sample servers sent to Canada for a security evaluation.

Nested on the servers' mtherboards, the testers found a tiny microchip, not much bigger than a grain of rice, that wasn't part of the boards' original design. Amazon reported the discovery to U.S. authorities, sending a shudder through the intelligence community. Elemental's servers could be found in Department of Defense data centers, the CIA's drone operations, and the onboard networks of Navy warships. And Elemental was just one of hundreds of Supermicro customers.

During the ensuing top-secret probe, which remains open more than three years later, investigators determined that the chips allowed the attackers to create a stealth doorway into any network that included the altered machines.

If true, it's impossible to downplay the severity of this: Compromised steaming servers running in the centers of not only the world's biggest technology companies but the intelligence and defense apparatus of the U.S. Government.

(Bloomberg doesn't state whether any other countries use these servers in similar ways but, given Super Micro's position in the market, it's difficult to imagine they don't.)

Now, hardware attacks are nothing new. We've seen everything from Juice-Jacking, which compromised USB ports to inject malware into any device that tried to connect to them, to interception attacks where agencies, including U.S. intelligence agencies according to Edward Snowdown, grabbed devices during transit and compromise them before they got to their destination.

What this alleges, though, is deeper and far wider ranging than any of that.

Here's how the attack supposedly worked:

A Chinese military unit designed and manufactured microchips as small as a sharpened pencil tip. Some of the chips were built to look like signal conditioning couplers, and they incorporated memory, networking capability, and sufficient processing power for an attack.

The microchips were inserted at Chinese factories that supplied Supermicro, one of the world's biggest sellers of server motherboards.

The compromised motherboards were built into servers assembled by Supermicro.

The sabotaged servers made their way inside data centers operated by dozens of companies.

To get the chips into the motherboards, Bloomberg says an ages-old bride/threat model was used. Plant managers at the factories where production had been outsourced were offered money and, if that didn't work, threatened with business-closing inspections.

And here's what Bloomberg says they did:

In simplified terms, the implants on Supermicro hardware manipulated the core operating instructions that tell the server what to do as data move across a motherboard, two people familiar with the chips' operation say. This happened at a crucial moment, as small bits of the operating system were being stored in the board's temporary memory en route to the server's central processor, the CPU. The implant was placed on the board in a way that allowed it to effectively edit this information queue, injecting its own code or altering the order of the instructions the CPU was meant to follow. Deviously small changes could create disastrous effects.

Since the implants were small, the amount of code they contained was small as well. But they were capable of doing two very important things: telling the device to communicate with one of several anonymous computers elsewhere on the internet that were loaded with more complex code; and preparing the device's operating system to accept this new code. The illicit chips could do all this because they were connected to the baseboard management controller, a kind of superchip that administrators use to remotely log in to problematic servers, giving them access to the most sensitive code even on machines that have crashed or are turned off.

This system could let the attackers alter how the device functioned, line by line, however they wanted, leaving no one the wiser.

There's been some debate about the technical accuracy and acumen of Bloomberg's reporting. So much so, with something this important, I wish they'd engaged a high-level information security expert as technical editor before publishing.

Whether a chip, as described, can do what's being described and whether or not the group being described could produce such a chip are among the debate topics.

Bloomberg alleges these compromised broads found their way into over 30 U.S. companies, including banks, U.S. military and defense agencies, Amazon, and similarly right up there in the headline, Apple.

Apple made its discovery of suspicious chips inside Supermicro servers around May 2015, after detecting odd network activity and firmware problems, according to a person familiar with the timeline. Two of the senior Apple insiders say the company reported the incident to the FBI but kept details about what it had detected tightly held, even internally. Government investigators were still chasing clues on their own when Amazon made its discovery and gave them access to sabotaged hardware, according to one U.S. official. This created an invaluable opportunity for intelligence agencies and the FBI—by then running a full investigation led by its cyber- and counterintelligence teams—to see what the chips looked like and how they worked.

In early 2016, Apple discovered what it believed was a potential security vulnerability in at least one data center server it purchased from a U.S.-based manufacturer, Super Micro Computer, according to a Super Micro executive and two people who were briefed about the incident at Apple. The server was part of Apple's technical infrastructure, which powers its web-based services and holds customer data.

Apple ended up terminating its yearslong business relationship with Super Micro, according to Tau Leng, a senior vice president of technology for Super Micro, and a person who was told about the incident by a senior infrastructure engineering executive at Apple. The tech giant even returned some of Super Micro's servers to the company, according to one of the people briefed about the incident.

There is conflicting information about the exact nature of the vulnerability and the circumstances surrounding the incident. According to Mr. Leng, an Apple representative told its account manager at Super Micro via email that Apple's "internal development environment was being compromised" because of firmware it downloaded to certain microchips within servers it had bought from Super Micro.

At the time, Apple's response to The Information was:

Apple was "not aware of...infected firmware found on the servers purchased from this vendor."

The servers were described as being used by the Apple-aquired Topsy Labs team to improve App Store and Siri Search, something echoed by Bloomberg.

Three senior insiders at Apple say that in the summer of 2015, it, too, found malicious chips on Supermicro motherboards. Apple severed ties with Supermicro the following year, for what it described as unrelated reasons.

Why Apple would wait so long to take action, given the severity of the circumstances alleged, isn't addressed by Bloomberg.

Apple's response to Bloomberg was, in a word, savage. I've been covering Apple for a decade and I can't recall ever seeing anything as aggressive or encompassing as this.

Here's what Apple shared with me and other outlets — and, yeah, I know, so much reading so far.. so much… but this is important and really has to be presented in full to be understood in full:

Over the course of the past year, Bloomberg has contacted us multiple times with claims, sometimes vague and sometimes elaborate, of an alleged security incident at Apple. Each time, we have conducted rigorous internal investigations based on their inquiries and each time we have found absolutely no evidence to support any of them. We have repeatedly and consistently offered factual responses, on the record, refuting virtually every aspect of Bloomberg's story relating to Apple.

On this we can be very clear: Apple has never found malicious chips, "hardware manipulations" or vulnerabilities purposely planted in any server. Apple never had any contact with the FBI or any other agency about such an incident. We are not aware of any investigation by the FBI, nor are our contacts in law enforcement.

In response to Bloomberg's latest version of the narrative, we present the following facts: Siri and Topsy never shared servers; Siri has never been deployed on servers sold to us by Super Micro; and Topsy data was limited to approximately 2,000 Super Micro servers, not 7,000. None of those servers have ever been found to hold malicious chips.

As a matter of practice, before servers are put into production at Apple they are inspected for security vulnerabilities and we update all firmware and software with the latest protections. We did not uncover any unusual vulnerabilities in the servers we purchased from Super Micro when we updated the firmware and software according to our standard procedures.

We are deeply disappointed that in their dealings with us, Bloomberg's reporters have not been open to the possibility that they or their sources might be wrong or misinformed. Our best guess is that they are confusing their story with a previously-reported 2016 incident in which we discovered an infected driver on a single Super Micro server in one of our labs. That one-time event was determined to be accidental and not a targeted attack against Apple.

While there has been no claim that customer data was involved, we take these allegations seriously and we want users to know that we do everything possible to safeguard the personal information they entrust to us. We also want them to know that what Bloomberg is reporting about Apple is inaccurate.

Apple has always believed in being transparent about the ways we handle and protect data. If there were ever such an event as Bloomberg News has claimed, we would be forthcoming about it and we would work closely with law enforcement. Apple engineers conduct regular and rigorous security screenings to ensure that our systems are safe. We know that security is an endless race and that's why we constantly fortify our systems against increasingly sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals who want to steal our data.

Apple has since greatly expanded on that, including denying any gag order or secrecy obligation is in place, in a Newsroom post.

Just as I was about to post this, Amazon also pushed out a refutation every bit as aggressive and encompassing. I'll spare you the full text of that, but will share the best part here and link to the full statement above.

There are so many inaccuracies in ‎this article as it relates to Amazon that they're hard to count. We will name only a few of them here. First, when Amazon was considering acquiring Elemental, we did a lot of due diligence with our own security team, and also commissioned a single external security company to do a security assessment for us as well. That report did not identify any issues with modified chips or hardware. As is typical with most of these audits, it offered some recommended areas to remediate, and we fixed all critical issues before the acquisition closed. This was the sole external security report commissioned. Bloomberg has admittedly never seen our commissioned security report nor any other (and refused to share any details of any purported other report with us).

Here you have what should be one of the most respected business publications in the industry with a years-long report that, presumably, had it's fact checkers fact checks fact checked, and on the other side, the biggest tech companies in the world, public companies that are subject to the SEC and shareholder lawsuits, issuing statements that contradict it in the strongest terms possible.

About the only thing everyone agrees on is that there's no evidence any customer data — any of our data — has been compromised.

Now, just as I pointed out The Information had previously reported on Apple and Super Micro, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that Bloomberg has gotten Apple wrong in the past, including and especially its reports that iPhone X wasn't selling — something that I called at the time a failure verging on malpractice that, combined with similar coverage from similar outlets, needed to be carefully vetted for potential market manipulation by the usual hedge fund suspects.

Bloomberg also holds the distinction of drawing the previous aggressive PR response record when it claimed Apple had sacrificed Face ID security in order to increase manufacturing yields. Something that was almost Steve Jobs-ian in its terse fury.

So, where does this leave us?

One, Bloomberg could have gotten this catastrophically wrong. Through some mix of broken telephone, rumor mutation, and the constant need to get Apple into headlines, the story as written could have elements of truth but in broad strokes and details simply not have gotten it right. For a major publication, that would be a bloody nose to say the least. Though, we now live in a day and age where previously career-ending incidents sometimes aren't even remembered a few hours later.

Two, Apple and Amazon could be lying. A gag order would result in no comment, compartmentalization — where executives know things PR does not — may fly for a standard rebuttal but not anything as extreme as we're seeing. This isn't PR in the dark. This is PR unleashed, Kraken style. They're not even parsing words or hiding attribution. They're closing holes and stamping their names. And, as public companies, that's more than risking a bloody nose. It's risking the liver shot of federal investigation and civil lawsuits. There's no crime that we know of here to cover up. Apple, Amazon, and others are victims. No risk assessment makes that make sense.

Three, something else entirely could be going on. As with iPhone X sales reports being manipulated for stock shorting purposes, there could be elements at play trying to manipulate companies, markets, and sentiments in aid of or againt anything and everything from trade agreements to security agendas. That's an incredibly conspiratorial stance to take on any of this, but given how media can and will be manipulated these days, it's better leaving nothing on the table.

No matter what you choose personally to believe, the risk is so great here because eventually the truth will come out. If there is or was an FBI investigation, that will come out. And that's where none of this makes any sense.

I'm an optimist. I like to believe Bloomberg would fact-check the hell out of all of this before printing world one. That they would have it cold. But I also like to believe no public company would risk refuting it this strong if they weren't dead sure it was wrong.

The various accounts can't be reconciled. There are no multiple truths here. Someone got it wrong under circumstances where getting it wrong is catastrophic.

Bloomberg claims Apple, Amazon, and over 30 U.S. companies were hit by malicious chips planted on motherboards used by Supermicro servers. Apple and Amazon claim Bloomberg has no idea what it's talking about.

Bloomberg Businessweek has dropped a bombshell: Chinese intelligence — agents of the People's Liberation Army — forced factories in China to add tiny spy chips to server boards being manufactured for industry-leading Super Micro, to be sold to industry giants like Apple and Amazon. Their boards and servers literally provide the hearts and minds for many of the world's data centers, large and small. And, the report says, they've been hacked at the hardware level.

December 11, 2018: Super Micro: No 'Big Hack' malicious chips found in motherboards

A third party audit of Super Micro motherboards, old and new, has found zero evidence of the 'big hack' hardware spy chips Bloomberg alleged were sold to Amazon, Apple, and dozens of other tech companies.

Computer hardware maker Super Micro Computer Inc told customers on Tuesday that an outside investigations firm had found no evidence of any malicious hardware in its current or older-model motherboards.

Given Apple and Amazon's strong denials and the lack of any corroborating reporting from other outlets like The Washington Post or the New York Times, this is looking worse and worse for Bloomberg.

October 7, 2018: Named source in "The Big Hack" has doubts about the story

A new episode of RISKY.BIZ reveals that the ' "Big Hack" technical source Joe Fitzpatrick has concerns about Bloomberg's reporting...'

Apple Vice President for Information Security George Stathakopoulos wrote in a letter to the Senate and House commerce committees that the company had repeatedly investigated and found no evidence for the main points in a Bloomberg Businessweek article published on Thursday, including that chips inside servers sold to Apple by Super Micro Computer Inc (SMCI.PK) allowed for backdoor transmissions to China.

"Apple's proprietary security tools are continuously scanning for precisely this kind of outbound traffic, as it indicates the existence of malware or other malicious activity. Nothing was ever found," he wrote in the letter provided to Reuters.

October 6, 2018: DHS says it has 'no reason to doubt statements' on Big Hack from Apple & Amazon

The Department of Homeland Security is aware of the media reports of a technology supply chain compromise. Like our partners in the UK, the National Cyber Security Centre, at this time we have no reason to doubt the statements from the companies named in the story. Information and communications technology supply chain security is core to DHS's cybersecurity mission and we are committed to the security and integrity of the technology on which Americans and others around the world increasingly rely. Just this month – National Cybersecurity Awareness Month – we launched several government-industry initiatives to develop near- and long-term solutions to manage risk posed by the complex challenges of increasingly global supply chains. These initiatives will build on existing partnerships with a wide range of technology companies to strengthen our nation's collective cybersecurity and risk management efforts.

October 5, 2018: Former Apple General Counsel, Bruce Sewell: Nobody at the FBI knew what the SuperMicro story was about

Bruce Sewell retired earlier this year after a long and successful career culminating in his time as Apple General Counsel. Here's what he had to say about the Super Micro story as reported by Bloomberg.

Apple's recently retired general counsel, Bruce Sewell, told Reuters he called the FBI's then-general counsel James Baker last year after being told by Bloomberg of an open investigation into Super Micro Computer Inc , a hardware maker whose products Bloomberg said were implanted with malicious Chinese chips.

"I got on the phone with him personally and said, 'Do you know anything about this?," Sewell said of his conversation with Baker. "He said, 'I've never heard of this, but give me 24 hours to make sure.' He called me back 24 hours later and said 'Nobody here knows what this story is about.'"

According to Bloomberg, the hardware hack was discovered when Amazon decided to buy Super Micro customer, and streaming video disruptor Elemental Technologies, but first had sample servers sent to Canada for a security evaluation.

Nested on the servers' mtherboards, the testers found a tiny microchip, not much bigger than a grain of rice, that wasn't part of the boards' original design. Amazon reported the discovery to U.S. authorities, sending a shudder through the intelligence community. Elemental's servers could be found in Department of Defense data centers, the CIA's drone operations, and the onboard networks of Navy warships. And Elemental was just one of hundreds of Supermicro customers.

During the ensuing top-secret probe, which remains open more than three years later, investigators determined that the chips allowed the attackers to create a stealth doorway into any network that included the altered machines.

If true, it's impossible to downplay the severity of this: Compromised steaming servers running in the centers of not only the world's biggest technology companies but the intelligence and defense apparatus of the U.S. Government.

(Bloomberg doesn't state whether any other countries use these servers in similar ways but, given Super Micro's position in the market, it's difficult to imagine they don't.)

Now, hardware attacks are nothing new. We've seen everything from Juice-Jacking, which compromised USB ports to inject malware into any device that tried to connect to them, to interception attacks where agencies, including U.S. intelligence agencies according to Edward Snowdown, grabbed devices during transit and compromise them before they got to their destination.

What this alleges, though, is deeper and far wider ranging than any of that.

Here's how the attack supposedly worked:

A Chinese military unit designed and manufactured microchips as small as a sharpened pencil tip. Some of the chips were built to look like signal conditioning couplers, and they incorporated memory, networking capability, and sufficient processing power for an attack.

The microchips were inserted at Chinese factories that supplied Supermicro, one of the world's biggest sellers of server motherboards.

The compromised motherboards were built into servers assembled by Supermicro.

The sabotaged servers made their way inside data centers operated by dozens of companies.

To get the chips into the motherboards, Bloomberg says an ages-old bride/threat model was used. Plant managers at the factories where production had been outsourced were offered money and, if that didn't work, threatened with business-closing inspections.

And here's what Bloomberg says they did:

In simplified terms, the implants on Supermicro hardware manipulated the core operating instructions that tell the server what to do as data move across a motherboard, two people familiar with the chips' operation say. This happened at a crucial moment, as small bits of the operating system were being stored in the board's temporary memory en route to the server's central processor, the CPU. The implant was placed on the board in a way that allowed it to effectively edit this information queue, injecting its own code or altering the order of the instructions the CPU was meant to follow. Deviously small changes could create disastrous effects.

Since the implants were small, the amount of code they contained was small as well. But they were capable of doing two very important things: telling the device to communicate with one of several anonymous computers elsewhere on the internet that were loaded with more complex code; and preparing the device's operating system to accept this new code. The illicit chips could do all this because they were connected to the baseboard management controller, a kind of superchip that administrators use to remotely log in to problematic servers, giving them access to the most sensitive code even on machines that have crashed or are turned off.

This system could let the attackers alter how the device functioned, line by line, however they wanted, leaving no one the wiser.

There's been some debate about the technical accuracy and acumen of Bloomberg's reporting. So much so, with something this important, I wish they'd engaged a high-level information security expert as technical editor before publishing.

Whether a chip, as described, can do what's being described and whether or not the group being described could produce such a chip are among the debate topics.

Bloomberg alleges these compromised broads found their way into over 30 U.S. companies, including banks, U.S. military and defense agencies, Amazon, and similarly right up there in the headline, Apple.

Apple made its discovery of suspicious chips inside Supermicro servers around May 2015, after detecting odd network activity and firmware problems, according to a person familiar with the timeline. Two of the senior Apple insiders say the company reported the incident to the FBI but kept details about what it had detected tightly held, even internally. Government investigators were still chasing clues on their own when Amazon made its discovery and gave them access to sabotaged hardware, according to one U.S. official. This created an invaluable opportunity for intelligence agencies and the FBI—by then running a full investigation led by its cyber- and counterintelligence teams—to see what the chips looked like and how they worked.

In early 2016, Apple discovered what it believed was a potential security vulnerability in at least one data center server it purchased from a U.S.-based manufacturer, Super Micro Computer, according to a Super Micro executive and two people who were briefed about the incident at Apple. The server was part of Apple's technical infrastructure, which powers its web-based services and holds customer data.

Apple ended up terminating its yearslong business relationship with Super Micro, according to Tau Leng, a senior vice president of technology for Super Micro, and a person who was told about the incident by a senior infrastructure engineering executive at Apple. The tech giant even returned some of Super Micro's servers to the company, according to one of the people briefed about the incident.

There is conflicting information about the exact nature of the vulnerability and the circumstances surrounding the incident. According to Mr. Leng, an Apple representative told its account manager at Super Micro via email that Apple's "internal development environment was being compromised" because of firmware it downloaded to certain microchips within servers it had bought from Super Micro.

At the time, Apple's response to The Information was:

Apple was "not aware of...infected firmware found on the servers purchased from this vendor."

The servers were described as being used by the Apple-aquired Topsy Labs team to improve App Store and Siri Search, something echoed by Bloomberg.

Three senior insiders at Apple say that in the summer of 2015, it, too, found malicious chips on Supermicro motherboards. Apple severed ties with Supermicro the following year, for what it described as unrelated reasons.

Why Apple would wait so long to take action, given the severity of the circumstances alleged, isn't addressed by Bloomberg.

Apple's response to Bloomberg was, in a word, savage. I've been covering Apple for a decade and I can't recall ever seeing anything as aggressive or encompassing as this.

Here's what Apple shared with me and other outlets — and, yeah, I know, so much reading so far.. so much… but this is important and really has to be presented in full to be understood in full:

Over the course of the past year, Bloomberg has contacted us multiple times with claims, sometimes vague and sometimes elaborate, of an alleged security incident at Apple. Each time, we have conducted rigorous internal investigations based on their inquiries and each time we have found absolutely no evidence to support any of them. We have repeatedly and consistently offered factual responses, on the record, refuting virtually every aspect of Bloomberg's story relating to Apple.

On this we can be very clear: Apple has never found malicious chips, "hardware manipulations" or vulnerabilities purposely planted in any server. Apple never had any contact with the FBI or any other agency about such an incident. We are not aware of any investigation by the FBI, nor are our contacts in law enforcement.

In response to Bloomberg's latest version of the narrative, we present the following facts: Siri and Topsy never shared servers; Siri has never been deployed on servers sold to us by Super Micro; and Topsy data was limited to approximately 2,000 Super Micro servers, not 7,000. None of those servers have ever been found to hold malicious chips.

As a matter of practice, before servers are put into production at Apple they are inspected for security vulnerabilities and we update all firmware and software with the latest protections. We did not uncover any unusual vulnerabilities in the servers we purchased from Super Micro when we updated the firmware and software according to our standard procedures.

We are deeply disappointed that in their dealings with us, Bloomberg's reporters have not been open to the possibility that they or their sources might be wrong or misinformed. Our best guess is that they are confusing their story with a previously-reported 2016 incident in which we discovered an infected driver on a single Super Micro server in one of our labs. That one-time event was determined to be accidental and not a targeted attack against Apple.

While there has been no claim that customer data was involved, we take these allegations seriously and we want users to know that we do everything possible to safeguard the personal information they entrust to us. We also want them to know that what Bloomberg is reporting about Apple is inaccurate.

Apple has always believed in being transparent about the ways we handle and protect data. If there were ever such an event as Bloomberg News has claimed, we would be forthcoming about it and we would work closely with law enforcement. Apple engineers conduct regular and rigorous security screenings to ensure that our systems are safe. We know that security is an endless race and that's why we constantly fortify our systems against increasingly sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals who want to steal our data.

Apple has since greatly expanded on that, including denying any gag order or secrecy obligation is in place, in a Newsroom post.

Just as I was about to post this, Amazon also pushed out a refutation every bit as aggressive and encompassing. I'll spare you the full text of that, but will share the best part here and link to the full statement above.

There are so many inaccuracies in ‎this article as it relates to Amazon that they're hard to count. We will name only a few of them here. First, when Amazon was considering acquiring Elemental, we did a lot of due diligence with our own security team, and also commissioned a single external security company to do a security assessment for us as well. That report did not identify any issues with modified chips or hardware. As is typical with most of these audits, it offered some recommended areas to remediate, and we fixed all critical issues before the acquisition closed. This was the sole external security report commissioned. Bloomberg has admittedly never seen our commissioned security report nor any other (and refused to share any details of any purported other report with us).

Here you have what should be one of the most respected business publications in the industry with a years-long report that, presumably, had it's fact checkers fact checks fact checked, and on the other side, the biggest tech companies in the world, public companies that are subject to the SEC and shareholder lawsuits, issuing statements that contradict it in the strongest terms possible.

About the only thing everyone agrees on is that there's no evidence any customer data — any of our data — has been compromised.

Now, just as I pointed out The Information had previously reported on Apple and Super Micro, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that Bloomberg has gotten Apple wrong in the past, including and especially its reports that iPhone X wasn't selling — something that I called at the time a failure verging on malpractice that, combined with similar coverage from similar outlets, needed to be carefully vetted for potential market manipulation by the usual hedge fund suspects.

Bloomberg also holds the distinction of drawing the previous aggressive PR response record when it claimed Apple had sacrificed Face ID security in order to increase manufacturing yields. Something that was almost Steve Jobs-ian in its terse fury.

So, where does this leave us?

One, Bloomberg could have gotten this catastrophically wrong. Through some mix of broken telephone, rumor mutation, and the constant need to get Apple into headlines, the story as written could have elements of truth but in broad strokes and details simply not have gotten it right. For a major publication, that would be a bloody nose to say the least. Though, we now live in a day and age where previously career-ending incidents sometimes aren't even remembered a few hours later.

Two, Apple and Amazon could be lying. A gag order would result in no comment, compartmentalization — where executives know things PR does not — may fly for a standard rebuttal but not anything as extreme as we're seeing. This isn't PR in the dark. This is PR unleashed, Kraken style. They're not even parsing words or hiding attribution. They're closing holes and stamping their names. And, as public companies, that's more than risking a bloody nose. It's risking the liver shot of federal investigation and civil lawsuits. There's no crime that we know of here to cover up. Apple, Amazon, and others are victims. No risk assessment makes that make sense.

Three, something else entirely could be going on. As with iPhone X sales reports being manipulated for stock shorting purposes, there could be elements at play trying to manipulate companies, markets, and sentiments in aid of or againt anything and everything from trade agreements to security agendas. That's an incredibly conspiratorial stance to take on any of this, but given how media can and will be manipulated these days, it's better leaving nothing on the table.

No matter what you choose personally to believe, the risk is so great here because eventually the truth will come out. If there is or was an FBI investigation, that will come out. And that's where none of this makes any sense.

I'm an optimist. I like to believe Bloomberg would fact-check the hell out of all of this before printing world one. That they would have it cold. But I also like to believe no public company would risk refuting it this strong if they weren't dead sure it was wrong.

The various accounts can't be reconciled. There are no multiple truths here. Someone got it wrong under circumstances where getting it wrong is catastrophic.

If you have the Apple Watch 4 please please update to the new firmware released yesterday and take your ECG. I did last night and tried it out. Weird. Abnormal heat rate notifications. Ran the ECG app and came back afib. Well...glitchy firmware. Let's try again. Afib. Again and again and again. Piece of crap watch. My wife wakes up and I put it on her. Normal. Normal. Me afib. Try the other wrist, try the underside of the wrist. Every time afib warning.

Ok. So go to Patient First. Parking lot full and I'm going to blow it off and head home. Look at the watch again, afib again. Fine walk in and sign in. They ask what's wrong and I'm embarrassed. 'Ok so there is a new watch feature....hahaha....I'm silly but can we check this?"I did not know that this comment was a quick queue pass for Patient First. I'm taken right back and hooked up. The technician looks at the screen and says "I'm going to get the doctor"

Doctor comes in, looks at the screen, looks at me and says "You should buy Apple stock. This probably saved you. I read about this last night and thought we would see an upswing this week. I didn't expect it first thing this morning." Soooo long story short, heading to a cardiologist right now. Test yourself. I didn't have a clue. I may not ever have.

Hit the link to read the edits added later. But this is going to be one of those features that changes everything and for something that could not be any more important.

]]>

"You should buy Apple stock. This probably saved you. I read about this last night and thought we would see an upswing this week. I didn't expect it first thing this morning."

If you have the Apple Watch 4 please please update to the new firmware released yesterday and take your ECG. I did last night and tried it out. Weird. Abnormal heat rate notifications. Ran the ECG app and came back afib. Well...glitchy firmware. Let's try again. Afib. Again and again and again. Piece of crap watch. My wife wakes up and I put it on her. Normal. Normal. Me afib. Try the other wrist, try the underside of the wrist. Every time afib warning.

Ok. So go to Patient First. Parking lot full and I'm going to blow it off and head home. Look at the watch again, afib again. Fine walk in and sign in. They ask what's wrong and I'm embarrassed. 'Ok so there is a new watch feature....hahaha....I'm silly but can we check this?"I did not know that this comment was a quick queue pass for Patient First. I'm taken right back and hooked up. The technician looks at the screen and says "I'm going to get the doctor"

Doctor comes in, looks at the screen, looks at me and says "You should buy Apple stock. This probably saved you. I read about this last night and thought we would see an upswing this week. I didn't expect it first thing this morning." Soooo long story short, heading to a cardiologist right now. Test yourself. I didn't have a clue. I may not ever have.

Hit the link to read the edits added later. But this is going to be one of those features that changes everything and for something that could not be any more important.

Marques Brownlee, on his wildly successful MKBHD channel, has put together an extraordinary blind camera shootout:

No spoilers, but it turns out the cameras nerds love for color accuracy and sharpness aren't the ones everyone, including nerds, prefer when seeing them side by side on small, highly compressed social media sites. There, bright, highly saturated, images win.

I wonder if full-frame Canon and Nikon cameras with the best glass had been included, if they'd have fared any better. I think not.

Of course, if you have an iPhone, Pixel, Samsung, etc. photo you have far more room to tune, adjust, and even recover it if you need to, where pre-brightened, over-saturated, and black-crushed images won't afford you any of that.

But still, results like this have to make everyone pause and think.

I still think the better cameras are better cameras. Just because millions hit and maybe even prefer McDonald's every day, doesn't mean all the top chefs should give it up for burger flipping.

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Why do the worst cameras get the most votes on social media?

Marques Brownlee, on his wildly successful MKBHD channel, has put together an extraordinary blind camera shootout:

No spoilers, but it turns out the cameras nerds love for color accuracy and sharpness aren't the ones everyone, including nerds, prefer when seeing them side by side on small, highly compressed social media sites. There, bright, highly saturated, images win.

I wonder if full-frame Canon and Nikon cameras with the best glass had been included, if they'd have fared any better. I think not.

Of course, if you have an iPhone, Pixel, Samsung, etc. photo you have far more room to tune, adjust, and even recover it if you need to, where pre-brightened, over-saturated, and black-crushed images won't afford you any of that.

But still, results like this have to make everyone pause and think.

I still think the better cameras are better cameras. Just because millions hit and maybe even prefer McDonald's every day, doesn't mean all the top chefs should give it up for burger flipping.

Microsoft is going to ditch EdgeHTML, the rendering engine for its Edge browser, in favor of Google's open source Chromium browser (not to be confused with the productized Chrome browser). Windows Central broke the news almost a week ago and Microsoft has recently confirmed it.

Microsoft originally used Spyglass, then infamously Trident. Google originally used Apple's open source WebKit, based on KHTML, and then forked it into Blink and Chrome.

Mozilla, the organization behind the Gecko engine and Firefox browser, wasn't happy about the reduction in competition and and consumer choice.

So, why is Microsoft doing it?

This isn’t about Chrome. This is about ElectronJS. Microsoft thinks EdgeHTML cannot get to drop-in feature-parity with Chromium to replace it in Electron apps, whose duplication is becoming a significant performance drain. They want to single-instance Electron with their own fork https://t.co/HfAGxvLKb7

I don't share the depth of their pessimism regarding native apps, but Electron is without question a scourge. I think the Mac will prove more resilient than Windows, because the Mac is the platform that attracts people who care. But I worry.

Also:

As un-Mac-like as Word 6 was, it was far more Mac-like then than Google Docs running inside a Chrome tab is today. Google Docs on Chrome is an un-Mac-like word processor running inside an ever-more-un-Mac-like web browser. What the Mac market flatly rejected as un-Mac-like in 1996 was better than what the Mac market tolerates, seemingly happily, today. Software no longer needs to be Mac-like to succeed on the Mac today. That's a tragedy.

What strikes me is that, when you hear defenses for Electron apps, maybe even "Marzipan" apps, it's from program/product managers who value its efficiency and quantity. When you hear criticism, it's from the customers — and developers — forced to use it.

Microsoft is going to ditch EdgeHTML, the rendering engine for its Edge browser, in favor of Google's open source Chromium browser (not to be confused with the productized Chrome browser). Windows Central broke the news almost a week ago and Microsoft has recently confirmed it.

Microsoft originally used Spyglass, then infamously Trident. Google originally used Apple's open source WebKit, based on KHTML, and then forked it into Blink and Chrome.

Mozilla, the organization behind the Gecko engine and Firefox browser, wasn't happy about the reduction in competition and and consumer choice.

So, why is Microsoft doing it?

This isn’t about Chrome. This is about ElectronJS. Microsoft thinks EdgeHTML cannot get to drop-in feature-parity with Chromium to replace it in Electron apps, whose duplication is becoming a significant performance drain. They want to single-instance Electron with their own fork https://t.co/HfAGxvLKb7

I don't share the depth of their pessimism regarding native apps, but Electron is without question a scourge. I think the Mac will prove more resilient than Windows, because the Mac is the platform that attracts people who care. But I worry.

Also:

As un-Mac-like as Word 6 was, it was far more Mac-like then than Google Docs running inside a Chrome tab is today. Google Docs on Chrome is an un-Mac-like word processor running inside an ever-more-un-Mac-like web browser. What the Mac market flatly rejected as un-Mac-like in 1996 was better than what the Mac market tolerates, seemingly happily, today. Software no longer needs to be Mac-like to succeed on the Mac today. That's a tragedy.

What strikes me is that, when you hear defenses for Electron apps, maybe even "Marzipan" apps, it's from program/product managers who value its efficiency and quantity. When you hear criticism, it's from the customers — and developers — forced to use it.

This time I did something different: Used an iPhone XR side-by-side, and alternating with an iPhone 6s, so I could get a better, more real-world look at whether it's worth the upgrade.

iPhone XR has been out for just over a month. After doing my initial iPhone XR review, I've still been using it alongside and alternating with an iPhone XS. For the last few days , though, I've instead been using it alongside and alternating with an iPhone 6s. Why a 6s? Because I wanted to get a sense not just of how cool the new colors are, though they are, or whether the display and camera system were dealbreakers compared to the iPhone XS, which really depends on the individual, but how much of a difference the upgrade will make to a real person in the real world.

A lot of people considering the XR, people who don't get a new phone to review every couple days, weeks, or months, have been using the same phone for a couple or few years already. That's the 6s. Maybe the 6, SE, or 7. But mostly the 6s. And, if that's you or someone you're close to, I want to take my head out of the tech bubble for a minute and put myself in your shoes.

Maybe you're ready to upgrade and you're considering giving up the familiarity of the Home button — you know, the one only tech hot takers ever thought that was boring — and try out the full screen future. But you're wondering if the $750 up front or the few bucks extra on your carrier plan is worth it for the iPhone XR. Whether it will provide value to you or yours beyond the price.

iPhone XR Battery Life

One of the biggest things going for iPhone XR is battery life. Out of the box, it gets 25 hours of talk time, 15 hours of web browsing, 16 hours of video playback, and 65 hours of audio. That compares to 14 hours, 10 hours, 11 hours, and 50 hours respectively for an iPhone 6s.

That's about one and a half times as much battery life, on its best day, or if you've already gotten battery replacement. (Mine was at 88% before I got the swap, now back at 100.)

Either way, it makes a real difference. Not just because of the capacity but because of the workload.

Back when I first got my iPhone 6s at launch in 2015, my typical usage was just starting to get more demanding. Snapchat and Facebook have come and gone for me already, but they were huge battery hits when I was using them. Instagram and even Twitter still are. Thanks to video and stories with rendered and geo-based filters, they're always downloading and displaying media, pulling GPS, and otherwise hitting the battery. Hard.

I watch a lot more YouTube now than I did back then, not coincidentally, and my single biggest battery blaster remains Pokemon Go, which didn't exist when iPhone 6s launched but debuted the following summer and its combination of screen-on time, data, rendering, and GPS just brought most phones to their knees. Or, rather, red zones.

Just for fun, I took both phones out for Pokémon Go's community day this past weekend and even with both batteries near full health, the iPhone 6s was almost dead at the end of four hours but the iPhone XR could have easily gone 4 more. I quit before it did.

I said in previous years that Apple had to start testing not for the light web browsing and email checking of the past but the social, photo and video, and gaming realities of the present. And with iPhone XR, even more than iPhone XS, they have.

One month later and I want this battery path to be Apple's new normal.

iPhone XR Performance

You can play Fortnite at 60 frames-per-second. I mean that literally. Emphasis on the * you * can. Me, personally, I can die at 60 fps and I can die well, but if you can actually play and win, you can do it pretty damn gloriously on the iPhone XR.

Same goes for pretty much any high-end game that supports it, but also heavy-duty computational photography filters, video effects, machine learning models, and more. AR quick view, by the way, where you tap a web link and suddenly you're in augmented reality is one of those features that make you think you're living in the future.

We knew from the start that Apple's A12 Bionic was going to be a beast of a processor, but that's really born itself out. Rendering short video feels like saving images and saving images feels like… like closing them without saving. Instant. I don't know. Because there aren't that many pixels to push around, even the interface moves like it's on a hair trigger.

Literally nothing outside the terrible, freeze-prone coding of the Instagram app — can we please go back to Objective C or Swift? — slows it down. It feels like you're only ever constrained by the speed it takes to pull data off the storage — which is also silly fast — or off the internet, which is about the only time anything ever really spins or makes you wait.

Two years ago, Portrait Mode could peg an iPhone 7. Last year, AR an iPhone X. This year, some of that kind of stuff can still come close, but there's just so much headroom that I think it's going to take a year or two before we see anything really put A12 through its paces. And, since one of the reasons Apple puts so much power into its chipsets is so that they'll be able to handle updates for the next 4 or 5 years to come, if you're planning on keeping an iPhone XR anywhere nearly that long, even as a hand-me-down, it should legit more than last.

iPhone XR Navigation + Face ID

For most people, the biggest change moving from an iPhone 6s, or any traditional iPhone, to the XR will be the loss of the Home button. Again, tech hot takers can bemoan Apple's quote-un-quote boring design all day long, but for everyone consistency was a tangible user benefit and the Home button was a tactile escape hatch that could reorient us whenever anything got the least bit dodgy or confusing.

That's probably why, more than a year into the age of iPhone X, we hear anecdotes about how well last year's iPhone 8 and 8 Plus are still selling. Not just because of their discounted price but because of their consistency with previous generations. Their familiarity.

iPhone XR, though, brings that next-generation, almost full-screen iPhone experience to the table, and for considerably less than the more expensive than ever flagships. In fact, the XR screen is pretty much as big as an entire iPhone 6s or 7 or 8, case and all.

In place of the home button is an upward swipe and gesture-based navigation system that took me about a day to get used to. Now, a year later, it's not just tough to go back, it's slow.

In place of Touch ID is Face ID. There are a couple edge cases where it doesn't work as well, like if you want to reach over and unlock the phone or if you want to have multiple people registered. But in every other case, it's also not just faster but so fast it feels almost transparent.

Since the iPhone XR has the same, improved True Depth camera and faster A12 Secure Enclave as the XS, you're not giving anything up for the difference in price. Same with the navigation.

It's just best in class now.

iPhone XR Display

I feel like the iPhone XR display has been beaten to undeath now and all we have are zombie lich arguments left. While some people who's knowledge of display tech seems to go only spec sheet deep raised a lot of fuss about the resolution and pixel density before launch, which is kinda like complaining about a Ferrari just because it has fewer tires that a Mack Truck, anyone who knew anything about quality vs. quantity and, you know, context, took a wait and see attitude and, generally, liked what they saw.

The truth is, Apple's display team has gotten so good at everything from color calibration to color management that you can put an LCD iPhone XR next to an OLED iPhone XS and, unless you're looking for deep, deep black and can discern high contrast ratios, scarcely tell the difference. Which is insane, given how different the two display technologies are.

Since filming my initial review, I've also heard from a lot of people who suffer varying degrees of vertigo from the variable refresh rates on OLED but who don't have that problem with LCD, and so are super happy Apple is offering both in the new design.

The bezels remain a bit thicker, not than the top and bottom on an iPhone 6s or similar, but on the sides, and then there's the notch. The black faceplate helps minimize it and while you can never not see it, you do stop noticing it, especially because the screen, by comparison, feels so much more expansive and opened up.

It's the same density at the 6s, 7, and 8, just with more pixels to fill out the edge-to-rounded edge display, and with all the DCI P3 wider color gamut, TrueTone dynamic color temperature matching, and other advances Apple has made since. You can even put it into Display Zoom mode, like Plus and Max-sized iPhones, so everything looks bigger and, if you had been squinting to see things before, you won't have to any more.

About the only step back you'll notice is 3D Touch, if you use it a lot. The XR doesn't have it. It has Haptic Touch instead, which, while ok in the few areas it's implemented, just isn't a real replacement yet. If all you did was adjust levels in Control Center, you may not notice. If you peaked and popped all over the place, like I do, you'll miss it, or at least find the XS much more attractive.

There are going to be people who want to upgrade to higher density and to OLED on the XS, and fair enough, but for everyone who doesn't give a damn about the display technology, and who doesn't look at the their iPhone from less than a foot away, you won't notice a difference.

I do care, deeply, and a lot of the time I forget which one I'm looking at.

iPhone XR Camera

I also care about the cameras a lot, and this has been the biggest sticking point for me. I've lived on a dual system and 2x since iPhone 7 Plus and it's been a challenge to go back to shooting with just one and just wide. And, you know, it's been really interesting. The sneaker zoom. The framing. All of it.

It's like shooting with a 6s again but, though both cameras are 12 megapixel, the better aperture, higher quality sensor, and all the power in the A12X image signal processor makes them feel worlds apart. Especially in more challenging settings like lower light or higher movement.

Apple's purely computational portrait mode on the XR ends up being a very different beast from the fusion version I've been using since iPhone 7 Plus and still use on XS. I still prefer the latter but being able to shoot with far greater flexibility in lighting and range has been liberating. Yes, it's still limited to humans and their faces, which is a drag, but since Apple built a unique virtual lens model just for the wide angle, different from the telephoto, you get shots that the the previous portrait modes could simply never deliver.

I still wish the XS offered both, but with the Depth Control now offered even in preview — when other vendors still can't even do the basic depth effect in preview — the XR has proven more than solid all on its own.

That's especially true for shooting video, where the XR, like the XS, can shoot in extended dynamic range up to 4K 30fps, and regular dynamic range up to 4K 60fps, and in stereo, which works better than it has any right to given you're just using a tiny camera phone. It really makes iPhone XR competitive not with other phones but with other cameras.

Stereo playback is also great. I've watched a ton of shows and films with the new wide stereo speakers and it's the first time I've felt I didn't need to where headphones to actually enjoy what I'm listening to, and I've never been particularly fussy about audio.

Portrait Selfies, Animoji, Memoji, and all the AR on the front is exactly the same as the XS as well, and lightyears ahead of the selfie cams on older, traditional iPhones. Yeah, some of it is a gimmick, but when it's approaching the holidays and you can just Santa or elf-yourself, especially in the new group FaceTime feature, a few gimmicks aren't such a bad thing.

iPhone XR One Month Later

This is the part of the re-review where I'm supposed to make up a bunch of stuff I hate about the iPhone XR just so that people in the comments won't call me biased, or just of being a fanboy, because the internet loves to mistake cynicism for intelligence and being negative, even to the point of incredulity, with being cool. Well, screw that. iPhone XR is legit a great product and it's going to be a great phone choice for a lot of people.

For me, personally, even though I like the colors and size of the iPhone XR the best, the OLED-enabled HDR video and the dual camera system will keep me on the iPhone XS. But my job isn't just to review technology for me or people like me. It's to review it for everyone.

Some people will want the deeper, brighter display, others the ability to shoot at 2x, and still others the sheer size of the Max. But for everyone else, I think the XR isn't just the colorful spot in the next-generation iPhone lineup, it's the sweet spot.

This time I did something different: Used an iPhone XR side-by-side, and alternating with an iPhone 6s, so I could get a better, more real-world look at whether it's worth the upgrade.

iPhone XR has been out for just over a month. After doing my initial iPhone XR review, I've still been using it alongside and alternating with an iPhone XS. For the last few days , though, I've instead been using it alongside and alternating with an iPhone 6s. Why a 6s? Because I wanted to get a sense not just of how cool the new colors are, though they are, or whether the display and camera system were dealbreakers compared to the iPhone XS, which really depends on the individual, but how much of a difference the upgrade will make to a real person in the real world.

A lot of people considering the XR, people who don't get a new phone to review every couple days, weeks, or months, have been using the same phone for a couple or few years already. That's the 6s. Maybe the 6, SE, or 7. But mostly the 6s. And, if that's you or someone you're close to, I want to take my head out of the tech bubble for a minute and put myself in your shoes.

Maybe you're ready to upgrade and you're considering giving up the familiarity of the Home button — you know, the one only tech hot takers ever thought that was boring — and try out the full screen future. But you're wondering if the $750 up front or the few bucks extra on your carrier plan is worth it for the iPhone XR. Whether it will provide value to you or yours beyond the price.

iPhone XR Battery Life

One of the biggest things going for iPhone XR is battery life. Out of the box, it gets 25 hours of talk time, 15 hours of web browsing, 16 hours of video playback, and 65 hours of audio. That compares to 14 hours, 10 hours, 11 hours, and 50 hours respectively for an iPhone 6s.

That's about one and a half times as much battery life, on its best day, or if you've already gotten battery replacement. (Mine was at 88% before I got the swap, now back at 100.)

Either way, it makes a real difference. Not just because of the capacity but because of the workload.

Back when I first got my iPhone 6s at launch in 2015, my typical usage was just starting to get more demanding. Snapchat and Facebook have come and gone for me already, but they were huge battery hits when I was using them. Instagram and even Twitter still are. Thanks to video and stories with rendered and geo-based filters, they're always downloading and displaying media, pulling GPS, and otherwise hitting the battery. Hard.

I watch a lot more YouTube now than I did back then, not coincidentally, and my single biggest battery blaster remains Pokemon Go, which didn't exist when iPhone 6s launched but debuted the following summer and its combination of screen-on time, data, rendering, and GPS just brought most phones to their knees. Or, rather, red zones.

Just for fun, I took both phones out for Pokémon Go's community day this past weekend and even with both batteries near full health, the iPhone 6s was almost dead at the end of four hours but the iPhone XR could have easily gone 4 more. I quit before it did.

I said in previous years that Apple had to start testing not for the light web browsing and email checking of the past but the social, photo and video, and gaming realities of the present. And with iPhone XR, even more than iPhone XS, they have.

One month later and I want this battery path to be Apple's new normal.

iPhone XR Performance

You can play Fortnite at 60 frames-per-second. I mean that literally. Emphasis on the * you * can. Me, personally, I can die at 60 fps and I can die well, but if you can actually play and win, you can do it pretty damn gloriously on the iPhone XR.

Same goes for pretty much any high-end game that supports it, but also heavy-duty computational photography filters, video effects, machine learning models, and more. AR quick view, by the way, where you tap a web link and suddenly you're in augmented reality is one of those features that make you think you're living in the future.

We knew from the start that Apple's A12 Bionic was going to be a beast of a processor, but that's really born itself out. Rendering short video feels like saving images and saving images feels like… like closing them without saving. Instant. I don't know. Because there aren't that many pixels to push around, even the interface moves like it's on a hair trigger.

Literally nothing outside the terrible, freeze-prone coding of the Instagram app — can we please go back to Objective C or Swift? — slows it down. It feels like you're only ever constrained by the speed it takes to pull data off the storage — which is also silly fast — or off the internet, which is about the only time anything ever really spins or makes you wait.

Two years ago, Portrait Mode could peg an iPhone 7. Last year, AR an iPhone X. This year, some of that kind of stuff can still come close, but there's just so much headroom that I think it's going to take a year or two before we see anything really put A12 through its paces. And, since one of the reasons Apple puts so much power into its chipsets is so that they'll be able to handle updates for the next 4 or 5 years to come, if you're planning on keeping an iPhone XR anywhere nearly that long, even as a hand-me-down, it should legit more than last.

iPhone XR Navigation + Face ID

For most people, the biggest change moving from an iPhone 6s, or any traditional iPhone, to the XR will be the loss of the Home button. Again, tech hot takers can bemoan Apple's quote-un-quote boring design all day long, but for everyone consistency was a tangible user benefit and the Home button was a tactile escape hatch that could reorient us whenever anything got the least bit dodgy or confusing.

That's probably why, more than a year into the age of iPhone X, we hear anecdotes about how well last year's iPhone 8 and 8 Plus are still selling. Not just because of their discounted price but because of their consistency with previous generations. Their familiarity.

iPhone XR, though, brings that next-generation, almost full-screen iPhone experience to the table, and for considerably less than the more expensive than ever flagships. In fact, the XR screen is pretty much as big as an entire iPhone 6s or 7 or 8, case and all.

In place of the home button is an upward swipe and gesture-based navigation system that took me about a day to get used to. Now, a year later, it's not just tough to go back, it's slow.

In place of Touch ID is Face ID. There are a couple edge cases where it doesn't work as well, like if you want to reach over and unlock the phone or if you want to have multiple people registered. But in every other case, it's also not just faster but so fast it feels almost transparent.

Since the iPhone XR has the same, improved True Depth camera and faster A12 Secure Enclave as the XS, you're not giving anything up for the difference in price. Same with the navigation.

It's just best in class now.

iPhone XR Display

I feel like the iPhone XR display has been beaten to undeath now and all we have are zombie lich arguments left. While some people who's knowledge of display tech seems to go only spec sheet deep raised a lot of fuss about the resolution and pixel density before launch, which is kinda like complaining about a Ferrari just because it has fewer tires that a Mack Truck, anyone who knew anything about quality vs. quantity and, you know, context, took a wait and see attitude and, generally, liked what they saw.

The truth is, Apple's display team has gotten so good at everything from color calibration to color management that you can put an LCD iPhone XR next to an OLED iPhone XS and, unless you're looking for deep, deep black and can discern high contrast ratios, scarcely tell the difference. Which is insane, given how different the two display technologies are.

Since filming my initial review, I've also heard from a lot of people who suffer varying degrees of vertigo from the variable refresh rates on OLED but who don't have that problem with LCD, and so are super happy Apple is offering both in the new design.

The bezels remain a bit thicker, not than the top and bottom on an iPhone 6s or similar, but on the sides, and then there's the notch. The black faceplate helps minimize it and while you can never not see it, you do stop noticing it, especially because the screen, by comparison, feels so much more expansive and opened up.

It's the same density at the 6s, 7, and 8, just with more pixels to fill out the edge-to-rounded edge display, and with all the DCI P3 wider color gamut, TrueTone dynamic color temperature matching, and other advances Apple has made since. You can even put it into Display Zoom mode, like Plus and Max-sized iPhones, so everything looks bigger and, if you had been squinting to see things before, you won't have to any more.

About the only step back you'll notice is 3D Touch, if you use it a lot. The XR doesn't have it. It has Haptic Touch instead, which, while ok in the few areas it's implemented, just isn't a real replacement yet. If all you did was adjust levels in Control Center, you may not notice. If you peaked and popped all over the place, like I do, you'll miss it, or at least find the XS much more attractive.

There are going to be people who want to upgrade to higher density and to OLED on the XS, and fair enough, but for everyone who doesn't give a damn about the display technology, and who doesn't look at the their iPhone from less than a foot away, you won't notice a difference.

I do care, deeply, and a lot of the time I forget which one I'm looking at.

iPhone XR Camera

I also care about the cameras a lot, and this has been the biggest sticking point for me. I've lived on a dual system and 2x since iPhone 7 Plus and it's been a challenge to go back to shooting with just one and just wide. And, you know, it's been really interesting. The sneaker zoom. The framing. All of it.

It's like shooting with a 6s again but, though both cameras are 12 megapixel, the better aperture, higher quality sensor, and all the power in the A12X image signal processor makes them feel worlds apart. Especially in more challenging settings like lower light or higher movement.

Apple's purely computational portrait mode on the XR ends up being a very different beast from the fusion version I've been using since iPhone 7 Plus and still use on XS. I still prefer the latter but being able to shoot with far greater flexibility in lighting and range has been liberating. Yes, it's still limited to humans and their faces, which is a drag, but since Apple built a unique virtual lens model just for the wide angle, different from the telephoto, you get shots that the the previous portrait modes could simply never deliver.

I still wish the XS offered both, but with the Depth Control now offered even in preview — when other vendors still can't even do the basic depth effect in preview — the XR has proven more than solid all on its own.

That's especially true for shooting video, where the XR, like the XS, can shoot in extended dynamic range up to 4K 30fps, and regular dynamic range up to 4K 60fps, and in stereo, which works better than it has any right to given you're just using a tiny camera phone. It really makes iPhone XR competitive not with other phones but with other cameras.

Stereo playback is also great. I've watched a ton of shows and films with the new wide stereo speakers and it's the first time I've felt I didn't need to where headphones to actually enjoy what I'm listening to, and I've never been particularly fussy about audio.

Portrait Selfies, Animoji, Memoji, and all the AR on the front is exactly the same as the XS as well, and lightyears ahead of the selfie cams on older, traditional iPhones. Yeah, some of it is a gimmick, but when it's approaching the holidays and you can just Santa or elf-yourself, especially in the new group FaceTime feature, a few gimmicks aren't such a bad thing.

iPhone XR One Month Later

This is the part of the re-review where I'm supposed to make up a bunch of stuff I hate about the iPhone XR just so that people in the comments won't call me biased, or just of being a fanboy, because the internet loves to mistake cynicism for intelligence and being negative, even to the point of incredulity, with being cool. Well, screw that. iPhone XR is legit a great product and it's going to be a great phone choice for a lot of people.

For me, personally, even though I like the colors and size of the iPhone XR the best, the OLED-enabled HDR video and the dual camera system will keep me on the iPhone XS. But my job isn't just to review technology for me or people like me. It's to review it for everyone.

Some people will want the deeper, brighter display, others the ability to shoot at 2x, and still others the sheer size of the Max. But for everyone else, I think the XR isn't just the colorful spot in the next-generation iPhone lineup, it's the sweet spot.

Microsoft is going all-in on that last one with its new holiday ad for the Surface Go, poking a little fun at the iPad and Apple's ambitions to make it a PC replacement.

Set to the tune of "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer," the ad sees a girl joyously professing the merits of a Surface Go over the iPad.

"Grandma, don't run out and buy an iPad. Fine when I was six but now I'm ten," the girl sings, implying the iPad is a toy meant for a younger audience. "My dreams are big, so I need a real computer to do all the amazing things I know I can." Ouch.

Microsoft has struggled with advertising for years, bouncing back and forth between marketing Surface as an iPad... no, wait... MacBook... no, wait... iPad alternative and not only failing to really make any consistent case, but to advertise Surface itself on its own merits. (Which, years later, I still think would be a far better strategy for them, even if it is complicated by Microsoft essentially competing, uncomfortably, against its own third-party hardware vendors.)

The problems here are two-fold.

It's hard to take Microsoft's statements about the iPad as sincere given the company prioritized making Office for iPad over making Office for its own platforms. That's how important and computational the device was to them.

It ends up with Microsoft's hardware ad insulting its own software users — the people who subscribe to and love using Office on iPad. Which is a bewildering strategy for the company. (Likely yet another discomforting issue that arrises from a platform and application maker also competing against its own vendors.)

Superficially, I can see how this might have appeared like a good strategy for the Surface marketing team. But it remains a bad one for Microsoft. Here's hoping they're the ones who grow up and make some "real" ads in the future.

Microsoft is going all-in on that last one with its new holiday ad for the Surface Go, poking a little fun at the iPad and Apple's ambitions to make it a PC replacement.

Set to the tune of "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer," the ad sees a girl joyously professing the merits of a Surface Go over the iPad.

"Grandma, don't run out and buy an iPad. Fine when I was six but now I'm ten," the girl sings, implying the iPad is a toy meant for a younger audience. "My dreams are big, so I need a real computer to do all the amazing things I know I can." Ouch.

Microsoft has struggled with advertising for years, bouncing back and forth between marketing Surface as an iPad... no, wait... MacBook... no, wait... iPad alternative and not only failing to really make any consistent case, but to advertise Surface itself on its own merits. (Which, years later, I still think would be a far better strategy for them, even if it is complicated by Microsoft essentially competing, uncomfortably, against its own third-party hardware vendors.)

The problems here are two-fold.

It's hard to take Microsoft's statements about the iPad as sincere given the company prioritized making Office for iPad over making Office for its own platforms. That's how important and computational the device was to them.

It ends up with Microsoft's hardware ad insulting its own software users — the people who subscribe to and love using Office on iPad. Which is a bewildering strategy for the company. (Likely yet another discomforting issue that arrises from a platform and application maker also competing against its own vendors.)

Superficially, I can see how this might have appeared like a good strategy for the Surface marketing team. But it remains a bad one for Microsoft. Here's hoping they're the ones who grow up and make some "real" ads in the future.

Apple doesn't have health services in its DNA. Not like it does the relentless democratization of computing technology or Music. And it never set out to revolutionize health either. Instead, Apple almost fell into health.

It's happening again. Real reporters from real papers of record are taking often single sources stories from the supply chain and, without providing anything by way of context or clarity, weaving yet another quarter of Apple-is-doomed stories to drive the stock price down ahead of what is usually the most lucrative earnings of the year.

It's the rinse-and-repeat formula of hedge-funds and market makers self-admittedly manipulating media into covering their shorts and making their quarters, damaging businesses and cheating investors, without anyone ever being held accountable. I've already been there and exposed that so, for this piece, I'm going to take things a step further.

What happens when the rumors are wrong so always they're eventually right? When the clock stuck on noon actually strikes twelve? Who knows, maybe this quarter, maybe two quarters from now, maybe a year, maybe ten years. At some point, the law of large numbers kicks in and everyone on planet earth who wants an iPhone has an iPhone they're pretty much happy with. Then what does Apple do?

After iPhone

Sell more iPhones. Get on Verizon. Sell more iPhones. Get on China Mobile. Sell more iPhones. Make them bigger. Sell more iPhone… oh, you sold all the iPhones.

That's how Wall Street works. It doesn't matter how successful you are or how much money you make, it only matters how much more successful and how much more money you'll make tomorrow. You could literally be earning a trillion dollars a minute and they'll wreck you for a company losing almost that much — because it could start making it tomorrow!

But that's the bizarro world we live in, the one Apple has to deal with, and unless and until it can open up stores on Mars and start opening up the alien markets, the one it has to prepare for post-iPhone.

Now, from a product perspective, Apple's done a lot of that already. Everything from Apple TV to Apple Watch to HomePod to AirPods are products for people who already have iPhones. And, Apple's pitch is, if you get these new products too, they'll all provide even greater value together. Based on how Apple's previously "other" business has been growing, that's working. At least in terms of any business that's not already as big as the iPhone.

In the future, if Apple goes ahead with special projects like augmented reality glasses or autonomous technologies, maybe even including a car, that could grow even wider.

Another angle of attack is services. And Apple's been doing a lot there as well. From the App Store and iTunes Store to Apple Music and the upcoming magazine and television content, it's again a way to maybe conquest a few more customers but also earn more from existing customers, again by adding greater value.

It's services that I want to focus on here. But not the traditional support or entertainment services. As fun and as lucrative as I think those are. No, I want to focus on something that I think could be even bigger for Apple and more important for us.

Health services.

Falling into Health

The Apple Watch needed a more accurate calorie counter. That's how the story goes. Apple wanted fitness to be a flagship feature for its new device and there was no other way to do the job even passingly right. So, Apple invested in a heart rate monitor.

It wasn't part of some secret multi-year plan to provide customers were health information or pitched to Apple executives and the board as way of grabbing a piece of the multi-billion dollar medical industry. When first envisioned, it wasn't even intended as a way to ensure Apple Pay security on the wrist, though it certainly turned out to be a great way to do just that.

It was simply a way to make sure the Workouts app recorded how many calories you were burning as accurately as possible.

But it lit a spark.

Watch, interestingly enough, is run by Apple's chief operating officer, Jeff Williams. And, as he and his teams, which include Kevin Lynch, the vice president in charge of watchOS software, saw how it was working and what kind of data it was getting, health began to join fitness as an area of interest.

It was still slow. It was still steady. Apple needed a place to store all the information it was getting from the Watch, so the Health app was created. Then, it was realized Health.app could store a whole bunch of similar information, and from more than just the Watch. So, HealthKit was born, which could talk not just to Watch but to other apps and accessories, became an inextricable part of it.

The interesting thing about data is that once you start to get it, you start to imagine all the things that you can do with it.

The heart rate data, for example, led Apple to wonder what could be done if it detected abnormal heart rates. It wasn't a hospital-grade sensor, to be sure, but it was almost always on, and that's not true for most hospital-grade sensors.

But Apple also realized having devices with your all the time, including Apple Watch and iPhone, could be a boon to all sorts of health and medical services.

An Apple a Day

Medical ID was an obvious example. Just putting your critical medical information in an easy-to-access place could make sure emergency services personnel could get to it when they — and you — needed it most.

ResearchKit was a less obvious example. As Apple started to think about how it could affect health at a larger scale, using the devices we have with us, rather than relying on tear-tag flyers, seemed like it could be transformative. Again, it flew under the radar at first, never part of some big pitch or potential new revenue stream. But the potential benefits were enormous.

ResearchKit is an open source framework introduced by Apple that enables your iOS app to become a powerful tool for medical research. Easily create visual consent flows, real-time dynamic active tasks, and surveys using a variety of customizable modules that you can build upon and share with the community. And since ResearchKit works seamlessly with HealthKit, researchers can access even more relevant data for their studies — like daily step counts, calorie use, and heart rate.

The flip side of tear tag flyers for research were endless lists for follow up care. The same ubiquity of the same devices, Apple realized, could also help with that. So, next came CareKit:

The next and most recent step for Apple is using its devices and its security to link us with our medical institutions through Health Records:

With the Health app in iOS 11.3, a new beta feature makes it easier than ever for users to visualize and securely store their health records. Now your patients can aggregate their health records from multiple institutions alongside their patient-generated data, creating a more holistic view of their health.

Apple has been accused of not consulting with outside healthcare professionals while working on the Watch and on its fitness and healthcare features. While that's sometimes true, it's mainly because Apple actively recruits healthcare professionals into its projects. Many of the team leads on Apple's health initiatives have medical degrees or are doctors who still spend part of their time practicing.

By bringing the expertise in-house, it means the experts can have earlier and fuller access to the projects and, instead of brief consultations, can help shape the projects and become invested in bringing them to market.

It also means Apple isn't just building tools for researchers and caregivers. Apple is building tools as and with researchers and caregivers.

Health & Privacy

Apple, famously, has had… absolutist ideas about privacy. Some believe to a fault — denying themselves the acceleration in machine learning that could be gained from mining the data of its hundreds of millions of users.

But, to its core, Apple believes customer data belongs to customers and doesn't want anything to do with it, unless it absolutely has to and then only for as long as it absolutely has to.

Data collection doesn't have to lead to data exploitation, though. That the biggest internet services companies have linked those two activities is a reflection only of the business model they've chosen. Different choices can also be made.

That's why, after some reflection, Apple decided it didn't have to be quite so absolutist about data, especially not when the benefit it could provide wasn't in business model but in customer care.

So, with HealthKit, Apple set it up so users could explicitly opt-in to sharing their data. That way, if the effects or complexity of their conditions made it difficult to enter precise information, like what medications are being taken and when, Apple linking everything together for them can help.

The advantage Apple has, and the peace-of-mind Apple customers have, is that none of this information is sucked up to anyone else's servers, used to feed anyone else's database, and then used to build profiles and auction off ads.

Instead, the data is used to try and better understand healthcare concerns to, ultimately, better treat patients. And the amount of trust that engenders can't be underestimated.

Multiple sclerosis is an immune-mediated illness that strips neural circuitry of its insulation, thereby slowing communication. Many factors determine how these denuded lesions emerge, and how much they impose symptoms. While we know these factors interact, measuring the interactions is difficult because they constantly change. As a result, MSers have fragmented experiences that haven't been explained, let alone anticipated. "MS Mosaic" is designed to gather the fragmented MS experiences together and use advanced computing methods to create the most comprehensive picture of MS to date.

The The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's PPD ACT is another:

PPD ACT is a research study developed by Postpartum Depression: Action Towards Causes and Treatment (PACT) Consortium, an international group of academic clinicians and scientists committed to understanding the interaction of genes and environment to predict which women are at risk of postpartum depression (PPD). The study aims to help researchers understand why some women suffer from PPD and postpartum psychosis (PPP) and others do not - critical knowledge that will improve detection, prevention and treatment of these conditions.

Join the PPD ACT study by downloading the app in the App Store or Play Store to help find the cure.

'Play Store' there not a typo. Apple intended ResearchKit to help everyone, not just people using Apple devices.

I've had a chance to talk with several teams who've fielded these kinds of projects and all of them speak passionately not only about what they're doing, but how Apple's technologies are helping them reach more people, faster and more effectively, and obtain better results than ever before.

That's the fascinating duality of Apple's current approach: Solving healthcare problems for the individual with new watchOS features, and solving problems for healthcare itself with frameworks like ResearchKit and CareKit.

The future of Health

That's all well and good as far as features go, but what does it mean for the future of Apple services, especially in a post iPhone world?

Possibly everything. Apple's already nailed some important use-cases like communications and entertainment. Health could be every bit as big, if not bigger, and far, far more important.

Apple never discusses future projects, of course, but it feels like we're still at the very beginning of its health and fitness activities.

Additional sensors are the most often rumored. Blood sugar top of most lists, though there could be many others. Like most rumors, realizing them in a practical, mainstream way can be harder and take longer than typing them out in a blog post or talking about them in a video.

Apple's reportedly also working on its own custom health silicon, which if you've seen what those teams have done with everything from systems-on-chips to systems-in-package, from sensor fusion hubs to wireless connectors, is beyond exciting.

But it could be bigger than that as well. And that's where I get really interested: Apple can use its existing expertise in security and convenience not just to upend health monitoring but health procedure as well.

I can already tap my Apple Watch for Apple Pay, to connect to Gym equipment and, in some schools and at Apple Park itself, use it in place of Student ID cards or employee badges.

It's not hard to imagine that, one day, I might be able to walk into any clinic or hospital, tap my Apple Watch or iPhone, and immediately authorize the sharing of my health records, insurance information, current medications and conditions, allergies if any, and all the other relevant data they need and I need them to have. Things I'd otherwise have to spend precious time tediously filling out from scratch, each time. Or worse, forget about or accidentally leave off.

Having all of that tracked, privately, securely, and having sensors and reminders helping out when and as needed — that by itself would be a healthcare revolution.

Apple doesn't have health services in its DNA. Not like it does the relentless democratization of computing technology or Music. And it never set out to revolutionize health either. Instead, Apple almost fell into health.

It's happening again. Real reporters from real papers of record are taking often single sources stories from the supply chain and, without providing anything by way of context or clarity, weaving yet another quarter of Apple-is-doomed stories to drive the stock price down ahead of what is usually the most lucrative earnings of the year.

It's the rinse-and-repeat formula of hedge-funds and market makers self-admittedly manipulating media into covering their shorts and making their quarters, damaging businesses and cheating investors, without anyone ever being held accountable. I've already been there and exposed that so, for this piece, I'm going to take things a step further.

What happens when the rumors are wrong so always they're eventually right? When the clock stuck on noon actually strikes twelve? Who knows, maybe this quarter, maybe two quarters from now, maybe a year, maybe ten years. At some point, the law of large numbers kicks in and everyone on planet earth who wants an iPhone has an iPhone they're pretty much happy with. Then what does Apple do?

After iPhone

Sell more iPhones. Get on Verizon. Sell more iPhones. Get on China Mobile. Sell more iPhones. Make them bigger. Sell more iPhone… oh, you sold all the iPhones.

That's how Wall Street works. It doesn't matter how successful you are or how much money you make, it only matters how much more successful and how much more money you'll make tomorrow. You could literally be earning a trillion dollars a minute and they'll wreck you for a company losing almost that much — because it could start making it tomorrow!

But that's the bizarro world we live in, the one Apple has to deal with, and unless and until it can open up stores on Mars and start opening up the alien markets, the one it has to prepare for post-iPhone.

Now, from a product perspective, Apple's done a lot of that already. Everything from Apple TV to Apple Watch to HomePod to AirPods are products for people who already have iPhones. And, Apple's pitch is, if you get these new products too, they'll all provide even greater value together. Based on how Apple's previously "other" business has been growing, that's working. At least in terms of any business that's not already as big as the iPhone.

In the future, if Apple goes ahead with special projects like augmented reality glasses or autonomous technologies, maybe even including a car, that could grow even wider.

Another angle of attack is services. And Apple's been doing a lot there as well. From the App Store and iTunes Store to Apple Music and the upcoming magazine and television content, it's again a way to maybe conquest a few more customers but also earn more from existing customers, again by adding greater value.

It's services that I want to focus on here. But not the traditional support or entertainment services. As fun and as lucrative as I think those are. No, I want to focus on something that I think could be even bigger for Apple and more important for us.

Health services.

Falling into Health

The Apple Watch needed a more accurate calorie counter. That's how the story goes. Apple wanted fitness to be a flagship feature for its new device and there was no other way to do the job even passingly right. So, Apple invested in a heart rate monitor.

It wasn't part of some secret multi-year plan to provide customers were health information or pitched to Apple executives and the board as way of grabbing a piece of the multi-billion dollar medical industry. When first envisioned, it wasn't even intended as a way to ensure Apple Pay security on the wrist, though it certainly turned out to be a great way to do just that.

It was simply a way to make sure the Workouts app recorded how many calories you were burning as accurately as possible.

But it lit a spark.

Watch, interestingly enough, is run by Apple's chief operating officer, Jeff Williams. And, as he and his teams, which include Kevin Lynch, the vice president in charge of watchOS software, saw how it was working and what kind of data it was getting, health began to join fitness as an area of interest.

It was still slow. It was still steady. Apple needed a place to store all the information it was getting from the Watch, so the Health app was created. Then, it was realized Health.app could store a whole bunch of similar information, and from more than just the Watch. So, HealthKit was born, which could talk not just to Watch but to other apps and accessories, became an inextricable part of it.

The interesting thing about data is that once you start to get it, you start to imagine all the things that you can do with it.

The heart rate data, for example, led Apple to wonder what could be done if it detected abnormal heart rates. It wasn't a hospital-grade sensor, to be sure, but it was almost always on, and that's not true for most hospital-grade sensors.

But Apple also realized having devices with your all the time, including Apple Watch and iPhone, could be a boon to all sorts of health and medical services.

An Apple a Day

Medical ID was an obvious example. Just putting your critical medical information in an easy-to-access place could make sure emergency services personnel could get to it when they — and you — needed it most.

ResearchKit was a less obvious example. As Apple started to think about how it could affect health at a larger scale, using the devices we have with us, rather than relying on tear-tag flyers, seemed like it could be transformative. Again, it flew under the radar at first, never part of some big pitch or potential new revenue stream. But the potential benefits were enormous.

ResearchKit is an open source framework introduced by Apple that enables your iOS app to become a powerful tool for medical research. Easily create visual consent flows, real-time dynamic active tasks, and surveys using a variety of customizable modules that you can build upon and share with the community. And since ResearchKit works seamlessly with HealthKit, researchers can access even more relevant data for their studies — like daily step counts, calorie use, and heart rate.

The flip side of tear tag flyers for research were endless lists for follow up care. The same ubiquity of the same devices, Apple realized, could also help with that. So, next came CareKit:

The next and most recent step for Apple is using its devices and its security to link us with our medical institutions through Health Records:

With the Health app in iOS 11.3, a new beta feature makes it easier than ever for users to visualize and securely store their health records. Now your patients can aggregate their health records from multiple institutions alongside their patient-generated data, creating a more holistic view of their health.

Apple has been accused of not consulting with outside healthcare professionals while working on the Watch and on its fitness and healthcare features. While that's sometimes true, it's mainly because Apple actively recruits healthcare professionals into its projects. Many of the team leads on Apple's health initiatives have medical degrees or are doctors who still spend part of their time practicing.

By bringing the expertise in-house, it means the experts can have earlier and fuller access to the projects and, instead of brief consultations, can help shape the projects and become invested in bringing them to market.

It also means Apple isn't just building tools for researchers and caregivers. Apple is building tools as and with researchers and caregivers.

Health & Privacy

Apple, famously, has had… absolutist ideas about privacy. Some believe to a fault — denying themselves the acceleration in machine learning that could be gained from mining the data of its hundreds of millions of users.

But, to its core, Apple believes customer data belongs to customers and doesn't want anything to do with it, unless it absolutely has to and then only for as long as it absolutely has to.

Data collection doesn't have to lead to data exploitation, though. That the biggest internet services companies have linked those two activities is a reflection only of the business model they've chosen. Different choices can also be made.

That's why, after some reflection, Apple decided it didn't have to be quite so absolutist about data, especially not when the benefit it could provide wasn't in business model but in customer care.

So, with HealthKit, Apple set it up so users could explicitly opt-in to sharing their data. That way, if the effects or complexity of their conditions made it difficult to enter precise information, like what medications are being taken and when, Apple linking everything together for them can help.

The advantage Apple has, and the peace-of-mind Apple customers have, is that none of this information is sucked up to anyone else's servers, used to feed anyone else's database, and then used to build profiles and auction off ads.

Instead, the data is used to try and better understand healthcare concerns to, ultimately, better treat patients. And the amount of trust that engenders can't be underestimated.

Multiple sclerosis is an immune-mediated illness that strips neural circuitry of its insulation, thereby slowing communication. Many factors determine how these denuded lesions emerge, and how much they impose symptoms. While we know these factors interact, measuring the interactions is difficult because they constantly change. As a result, MSers have fragmented experiences that haven't been explained, let alone anticipated. "MS Mosaic" is designed to gather the fragmented MS experiences together and use advanced computing methods to create the most comprehensive picture of MS to date.

The The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's PPD ACT is another:

PPD ACT is a research study developed by Postpartum Depression: Action Towards Causes and Treatment (PACT) Consortium, an international group of academic clinicians and scientists committed to understanding the interaction of genes and environment to predict which women are at risk of postpartum depression (PPD). The study aims to help researchers understand why some women suffer from PPD and postpartum psychosis (PPP) and others do not - critical knowledge that will improve detection, prevention and treatment of these conditions.

Join the PPD ACT study by downloading the app in the App Store or Play Store to help find the cure.

'Play Store' there not a typo. Apple intended ResearchKit to help everyone, not just people using Apple devices.

I've had a chance to talk with several teams who've fielded these kinds of projects and all of them speak passionately not only about what they're doing, but how Apple's technologies are helping them reach more people, faster and more effectively, and obtain better results than ever before.

That's the fascinating duality of Apple's current approach: Solving healthcare problems for the individual with new watchOS features, and solving problems for healthcare itself with frameworks like ResearchKit and CareKit.

The future of Health

That's all well and good as far as features go, but what does it mean for the future of Apple services, especially in a post iPhone world?

Possibly everything. Apple's already nailed some important use-cases like communications and entertainment. Health could be every bit as big, if not bigger, and far, far more important.

Apple never discusses future projects, of course, but it feels like we're still at the very beginning of its health and fitness activities.

Additional sensors are the most often rumored. Blood sugar top of most lists, though there could be many others. Like most rumors, realizing them in a practical, mainstream way can be harder and take longer than typing them out in a blog post or talking about them in a video.

Apple's reportedly also working on its own custom health silicon, which if you've seen what those teams have done with everything from systems-on-chips to systems-in-package, from sensor fusion hubs to wireless connectors, is beyond exciting.

But it could be bigger than that as well. And that's where I get really interested: Apple can use its existing expertise in security and convenience not just to upend health monitoring but health procedure as well.

I can already tap my Apple Watch for Apple Pay, to connect to Gym equipment and, in some schools and at Apple Park itself, use it in place of Student ID cards or employee badges.

It's not hard to imagine that, one day, I might be able to walk into any clinic or hospital, tap my Apple Watch or iPhone, and immediately authorize the sharing of my health records, insurance information, current medications and conditions, allergies if any, and all the other relevant data they need and I need them to have. Things I'd otherwise have to spend precious time tediously filling out from scratch, each time. Or worse, forget about or accidentally leave off.

Having all of that tracked, privately, securely, and having sensors and reminders helping out when and as needed — that by itself would be a healthcare revolution.

It might have taken Apple until the 2nd generation iPhone to go 3G, and until iPhone 5 to go to LTE, but by being radio-conservative the company avoided everything from low penetration to massive, battery-draining chipsets. Now, by skipping the first generation of 5G, it looks like Apple might just be missing out on something else: The massive notch necessitated by the RF windows on early concept devices.

It might have taken Apple until the 2nd generation iPhone to go 3G, and until iPhone 5 to go to LTE, but by being radio-conservative the company avoided everything from low penetration to massive, battery-draining chipsets. Now, by skipping the first generation of 5G, it looks like Apple might just be missing out on something else: The massive notch necessitated by the RF windows on early concept devices.

What's new with AirPods? Are they changing, getting new colors, going on sale? Here's the latest news on Apple's AirPods!

AirPods are one of the best products Apple has ever launched and rumor has it they'll be getting better as soon as this year. That includes new features like water — and sweat! — resistance, built-in "Hey, Siri!" parsing, an inductive charging.

We attribute AirPods' dramatic growth (14–16mn, 26–28mn, 50–55mn, 70–80mn and 100–110mn units in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021, respectively) to 1) the upgraded model with wireless charging support to benefit shipments to launch in 1Q19, 2) the all-new design model to boost replacement demand to launch in 1Q20, 3) an innovative user experience, and 4) high integration with iOS and Mac products. In summary, AirPods is Apple's most popular accessory ever, and it currently has the best growth momentum among Apple products.

The 2019 upgrades will likely have water/sweat resistance and an — also sold separately — inductive charging case. The 2020 model could feature a tweaked design and even more on-board functionality.

It's a great product. Apple's long known that. The market is starting to see that. Competitors are starting to understand that. The race is on.

September 10, 2018: New AirPods — and AirPower — still rumored for 2018

Ming-Chi Kuo, he of the supply chain info exfilitration expertise, has released a new research note with ongoing teases about AirPod 2 and AirPower.

Kuo still expects Apple's long-awaited AirPower charging mat and new AirPods to be released by the end of the year.

That could be as soon as Apple's September 12, 2018 event, but likely no later than the holiday shopping season.

June 26, 2018: New AirPods could arrive in 2019 with noise cancellation and water resistance

In a new report for Bloomberg, Mark Gurman claims that Apple will release a new set of its HomePod earbuds at some point in 2019, with improvements in device range, as well as noise cancellation features and water resistance.

The Cupertino, California-based company is working on new AirPods with noise-cancellation and water resistance, the people said. Apple is trying to increase the range that AirPods can work away from an iPhone or iPad, one of the people said. You won't be swimming in them though: The water resistance is mainly to protect against rain and perspiration, the people said.

Future AirPods might also come with biometric sensors, a possiblity that Apple is also said to be investigating. The company is also once again said to be working on a high-end set of over-ear headphones, also reportedly debuting next year.

February 22, 2018: New AirPods said to let you use Siri completely hands-free

The next iteration of Apple's AirPods could make talking to Siri easier. According to a new report from Bloomberg, the next iteration of the truly wireless earbuds will allow you to activate Siri using only your voice:

The model coming as early as this year will let people summon Apple's Siri digital assistant without physically tapping the headphones by saying "Hey Siri." The function will work similarly to how a user activates Siri on an iPhone or a HomePod speaker hands-free. The headphones, internally known as B288, will include an upgraded Apple-designed wireless chip for managing Bluetooth connections. The first AirPods include a chip known as the W1, and Apple released the W2 with the Apple Watch last year.

Apple is also said to be working on increasing the water resistance of the AirPods, but that improvement is apparently slated for some time in 2019.

December 19, 2017: Updated AirPods said to be coming in 2018

In a new note to investors, KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claims that Apple will release an updated version of its AirPods wireless earphones in the second half of 2018. From the note (via MacRumors:

Media reports over the past few days on brisk AirPods demand and Apple struggling to keep up with holiday season demand align with our findings and positive predictions on AirPods in several previous reports. […]

In 2018, we predict AirPods shipments will grow 100% YoY to 26-28mn units. We forecast the ASP of RFPCB for upgraded AirPods in 2H18 may increase, further benefiting business momentum of Unitech and Compeq.

Kuo offered few details on the upgraded AirPods, noting only that they would feature a smaller quartz component.

Apple at its September iPhone event announced an updated wireless charging case for AirPods. The case — which, save for a repositioned LED charging light, looks nearly identical to the current AirPods case — will feature wireless charging capabilities, letting you charge your AirPods and the case by placing it on a charging pad. Despite mentioning the new case, however, Apple didn't give us a clear date or price for the updated design.

MacRumors cites "information reportedly sourced from Apple Switzerland" that suggests we'll see the new wireless charging case this December and it'll reportedly run you $69. The publication points to AirPods case replacement costs as a potential indicator of the rumor's validity:

Apple's out-of-warranty fee to repair or replace the AirPods charging case is $69, so a similar price point for the wireless charging version does make some sense.

It's good to know we probably have until December to decide if we want to spend $69 to add an extra case and wireless charging capabilities to our AirPods!

September 9, 2017: AirPods getting a slightly new look

Thanks to some digging into the leaked supposed Gold Master (GM) version of iOS 11, developer Steve Troughton-Smith tweeted out some pictures of the second-generation AirPods. For the most part, they're exactly the same, but there is one notable change to the charging case: The LED status light is on the outside.

This change could make it easier for you to quickly assess whether you need to charge up your charging case before heading out, something I personally forget to do all of the time.

What do you want to see in the second-generation AirPods?

AirPods are the new hotness. Now that people — finally — have them in hand, many are loving them. Almost no one is calling them perfect, though. And what first-gen product really is? So, that leads to the big question: If Apple asked you what they should change for the next-generation AirPods, what would you tell them?

Ship more sooner! (Okay, yes, besides that!)

Black color option

(PRODUCT) RED color option.

Fashion options like Apple Watch bands.

USB-C instead of Lightning for charging.

BT tie-clip with manual controls for volume and skipping.

Swappable tips to fit a wider variety of ears.

Offline Siri, because you need to be able to command when— Zzzt ...

Proper Apple TV support

Find my AirPods feature.

Those are just a few of the suggestions I've seen so far. What are yours?

What's new with AirPods? Are they changing, getting new colors, going on sale? Here's the latest news on Apple's AirPods!

AirPods are one of the best products Apple has ever launched and rumor has it they'll be getting better as soon as this year. That includes new features like water — and sweat! — resistance, built-in "Hey, Siri!" parsing, an inductive charging.

We attribute AirPods' dramatic growth (14–16mn, 26–28mn, 50–55mn, 70–80mn and 100–110mn units in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021, respectively) to 1) the upgraded model with wireless charging support to benefit shipments to launch in 1Q19, 2) the all-new design model to boost replacement demand to launch in 1Q20, 3) an innovative user experience, and 4) high integration with iOS and Mac products. In summary, AirPods is Apple's most popular accessory ever, and it currently has the best growth momentum among Apple products.

The 2019 upgrades will likely have water/sweat resistance and an — also sold separately — inductive charging case. The 2020 model could feature a tweaked design and even more on-board functionality.

It's a great product. Apple's long known that. The market is starting to see that. Competitors are starting to understand that. The race is on.

September 10, 2018: New AirPods — and AirPower — still rumored for 2018

Ming-Chi Kuo, he of the supply chain info exfilitration expertise, has released a new research note with ongoing teases about AirPod 2 and AirPower.

Kuo still expects Apple's long-awaited AirPower charging mat and new AirPods to be released by the end of the year.

That could be as soon as Apple's September 12, 2018 event, but likely no later than the holiday shopping season.

June 26, 2018: New AirPods could arrive in 2019 with noise cancellation and water resistance

In a new report for Bloomberg, Mark Gurman claims that Apple will release a new set of its HomePod earbuds at some point in 2019, with improvements in device range, as well as noise cancellation features and water resistance.

The Cupertino, California-based company is working on new AirPods with noise-cancellation and water resistance, the people said. Apple is trying to increase the range that AirPods can work away from an iPhone or iPad, one of the people said. You won't be swimming in them though: The water resistance is mainly to protect against rain and perspiration, the people said.

Future AirPods might also come with biometric sensors, a possiblity that Apple is also said to be investigating. The company is also once again said to be working on a high-end set of over-ear headphones, also reportedly debuting next year.

February 22, 2018: New AirPods said to let you use Siri completely hands-free

The next iteration of Apple's AirPods could make talking to Siri easier. According to a new report from Bloomberg, the next iteration of the truly wireless earbuds will allow you to activate Siri using only your voice:

The model coming as early as this year will let people summon Apple's Siri digital assistant without physically tapping the headphones by saying "Hey Siri." The function will work similarly to how a user activates Siri on an iPhone or a HomePod speaker hands-free. The headphones, internally known as B288, will include an upgraded Apple-designed wireless chip for managing Bluetooth connections. The first AirPods include a chip known as the W1, and Apple released the W2 with the Apple Watch last year.

Apple is also said to be working on increasing the water resistance of the AirPods, but that improvement is apparently slated for some time in 2019.

December 19, 2017: Updated AirPods said to be coming in 2018

In a new note to investors, KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claims that Apple will release an updated version of its AirPods wireless earphones in the second half of 2018. From the note (via MacRumors:

Media reports over the past few days on brisk AirPods demand and Apple struggling to keep up with holiday season demand align with our findings and positive predictions on AirPods in several previous reports. […]

In 2018, we predict AirPods shipments will grow 100% YoY to 26-28mn units. We forecast the ASP of RFPCB for upgraded AirPods in 2H18 may increase, further benefiting business momentum of Unitech and Compeq.

Kuo offered few details on the upgraded AirPods, noting only that they would feature a smaller quartz component.

Apple at its September iPhone event announced an updated wireless charging case for AirPods. The case — which, save for a repositioned LED charging light, looks nearly identical to the current AirPods case — will feature wireless charging capabilities, letting you charge your AirPods and the case by placing it on a charging pad. Despite mentioning the new case, however, Apple didn't give us a clear date or price for the updated design.

MacRumors cites "information reportedly sourced from Apple Switzerland" that suggests we'll see the new wireless charging case this December and it'll reportedly run you $69. The publication points to AirPods case replacement costs as a potential indicator of the rumor's validity:

Apple's out-of-warranty fee to repair or replace the AirPods charging case is $69, so a similar price point for the wireless charging version does make some sense.

It's good to know we probably have until December to decide if we want to spend $69 to add an extra case and wireless charging capabilities to our AirPods!

September 9, 2017: AirPods getting a slightly new look

Thanks to some digging into the leaked supposed Gold Master (GM) version of iOS 11, developer Steve Troughton-Smith tweeted out some pictures of the second-generation AirPods. For the most part, they're exactly the same, but there is one notable change to the charging case: The LED status light is on the outside.

This change could make it easier for you to quickly assess whether you need to charge up your charging case before heading out, something I personally forget to do all of the time.

What do you want to see in the second-generation AirPods?

AirPods are the new hotness. Now that people — finally — have them in hand, many are loving them. Almost no one is calling them perfect, though. And what first-gen product really is? So, that leads to the big question: If Apple asked you what they should change for the next-generation AirPods, what would you tell them?

Ship more sooner! (Okay, yes, besides that!)

Black color option

(PRODUCT) RED color option.

Fashion options like Apple Watch bands.

USB-C instead of Lightning for charging.

BT tie-clip with manual controls for volume and skipping.

Swappable tips to fit a wider variety of ears.

Offline Siri, because you need to be able to command when— Zzzt ...

Proper Apple TV support

Find my AirPods feature.

Those are just a few of the suggestions I've seen so far. What are yours?

State of the art Apple industrial design and material science in stainless steel, black ceramics, and sapphire crystal, strapped in classic, hand-crafted, old word Hermes leather.

The juxtaposition is tremendous: Everything that's cutting edge and smart meets all that's traditional and watch. It's the Apple Watch Hermes Series 4, and absent Edition this year, it's the new highest end wrist computer in Apple's lineup. I've been using the Series 4 going on two months now, and for most of that time, the Hermes version, with several Hermes bands new and old, to go with it.

The original Apple Watch Hermès was announced in September of 2015, roughly six months after the sport, steel, and gold editions shipped. An historic partnership, it brought together and perfectly balanced the best of Apple's advanced mobile technologies and Hermès' classic leatherwork. For me, it was an even better representation of high-end silicon-meets-fashion than the yellow and rose golds.

It was Apple's first partnership for the Watch and, to this day, one of only two it's ever made. The other being Nike+ on the fitness rather than fashion end of the price range. That the two of them, and only the two of them, persist to this day show just how selective Apple is when it comes to partnering on the watch. And how committed.

Now, three years later, the partnership continues to grow, and in some surprising new directions.

Apple Watch Hermes Series 4 The Watch

From a hardware perspective, Apple Watch Hermes Series 4 is, not surprisingly, and Apple Watch Series 4. Specifically, a polished steel Apple Watch Series 4 in almost every way. The only difference is the inclusion of the Hermes brand on the back, around the black ceramic plate.

Historically, the polished stainless steel hasn't been as scratch resistant as the diamond-like carbon coated space black — which seems damn near impervious at times — and likely not even as resistant as the physical vapor deposition coating on the new gold colored steel watch.

In the weeks that I've been wearing mine I've accumulated a very few, almost unnoticeable scratches on the outer side near the buttons. They don't bother me. As I've said before, I like the Millennium Falcon style used materials look. But, if you don't, it's always something to keep in mind.

Apple Watch Hermes Series 4 The Faces

For software, the only difference remains the distinctive Hermes watch face that you can only get with the Hermes watch casing. (Sadly, Hermes bands don't come with unlock codes for the watch face.)

Apple and Hermès collaborated an an additional typeface a couple years ago. This year, they've added an entirely new look: two tone looks in Feu (indigo/white background with orange type), Rose (deep pink/indigo background with light pink type), and Ambre (Red/Pink background with yellow type). The background colors split with the minute hand, adding a little dynamism to the design.

There's only one complication spot, and only four options for it: Off, Date, Stopwatch, and World Clock. But the Hermes face isn't about being informationally dense. It's about being Hermes.

It still looks terrific, even three years on, and the new colors give it vivid new life. I switch to it whenever I want less Apple and more Watch, classy yet casual. It remains, to my eyes, the best looking analog watch face across the entire product line. And now it looks even better.

Apple Watch Hermes Series 4 The Bands

Every new Apple Watch Hermes series comes with new, distinctive bands. Some of the best, if most expensive bands Apple offers. They're all hand made, all Hermes leather, and all about as classic watchy watch as you can get.

And while they don't all appeal to my personal tastes, every year I tell myself there's no way I'm getting another one, not when the terrific Nike+ bands start at just $50, inevitably, every year, there's at least one or two styles that I find absolutely irresistible.

For Series 0, it was the cuff. For Series 2, the single deployant, for Series 3, the rallye, and now, for Series 4, the tri-color single tour. And yeah, I've gotten a new one or two every year because once they've come and gone for a season, they're often well and truly gone. A few remain over the years, but sometimes not in the same colors, and once in a while a style gets cycled out completely.

I don't love all of the Hermes straps. The double cuff was overly complicated to my eye, and the only tri-color I like is the Feu, with indigo and blanc bands and feu loops. But I like it so much it prompted me to once again order the Hermes Watch. So, well played.

The complete collection this year includes, with the 40mm stainless steel case:

Indigo/Craie/Orange Swift Leather Double Tour

Bordeaux/Rose Extrême/Rose Azalée Swift Leather Double Tour

Fauve Barenia Leather Double Tour

Bleu Indigo Swift Leather Double Tour

Bordeaux/Rose Extrême/Rose Azalée Swift Leather Single Tour

Fauve Barenia Leather Single Tour

The 44mm stainless steel case:

Indigo/Craie/Orange Swift Leather Single Tour

Bleu Indigo Swift Leather Single Tour

Fauve Barenia Leather Single Tour

Fauve Grained Barenia Leather Single Tour Rallye

Ébène Barenia Leather Single Tour Deployment Buckle

Fauve Barenia Leather Single Tour Deployment Buckle

You can still get the Feu double and single tours separately — I've had the single for a couple years and love it — and there's also a just-released 40mm Ambre/Capucine/Rose Azalée Swift Leather Double Tour and 44mm Ambre/Capucine/Rose Azalée Swift Leather Single Tour.

The only downside is that the colored leathers never start off as soft and supple and never end up aging and patina-ing as well as the raw leather straps. They look better, they just don't feel as good. But that's the story of fashion.

I also wish Apple and Hermes wouldn't restrict some styles to some sizes, since anatomy and taste aren't bound to small and large stereotypes.

I've been wearing the tri-color since I got it, because it's new and because it looks so damn good. But, I can see myself going back to the cuff and the deployant, and probably the rallye as well for extended periods just because of how great they feel.

While Apple Watch Hermes bands are, as I said, the most expensive bands Apple currently offers, I should point out they're not expensive by Hermes standards. If you get a non-Apple watch from Hermes, be it single or double tour, you'll likely pay a lot more for the strap that comes with it. They're also not expensive by watch standards. I have several friends who collect and they have some truly obscene, if not downright offensive stories about how much they've paid for classic straps.

If Apple Watch is just a fitness accessory for you, or just something to hold your wrist computer on with, then by all means stick to the sport bands and loops or whatever you can find on Amazon. If it's a watch in the watch collector sense of the word, then the Hermes bands are a great way to show it off. Especially since Apple has kept the same bands compatible with all watches going on 4 years in a row now, and hopefully for at least a few more if not many to come.

As with every Apple Watch Hermes since the Series 2, you also get a Sport Loop in Hermes Orange in every box. Leather is fantastic but not for workouts and certainly not for swims. So having the fluoroelastomer band, which you can easily swap in and out, remains a terrific addition.

Apple Watch Hermes Series 4 Two Months Later

I've been wearing an Apple Watch Series 4 with watchOS 5 for just over 10 weeks now, including a couple weeks with the aluminum, gold steel, Nike+, and now, for the last month, Hermès. I like the lightness and the feel of the aluminum models best but the look of the stainless steel, since that's still the only material that actually matches all the lugs on all the bands Apple sells.

Lug mismatches bother some people not at all and others immensely, all other things being equal, I'd still rather they match than don't, and still wish Apple would find some way to support better matches for the blacks and golds.

The taptics — the taps you get to alert you to notifications — still feel better to me than previous generation steel watches, which is great.

I love the bigger, edge-to-curved-edge display. I went back to wearing my Series 3 for a few days because the best way to tell if you really benefit from a new feature is to take it away, and it suddenly felt small and cramped in a way it never did before.

I missed everything about how expansive the new display was, most of all the new Infograph faces that I've come to use as dashboards for my day. Rumor has it Apple is going to be adding updated versions of some of the classic complications, like Messages and Mail, to Infograph as well, which will only make it better.

I use the new Hermes face whenever I go out all fancy like as well, but not really any of the other faces, including the new fire, vapor, and water faces, unless I'm doing a tech demo to show off the new big screen design.

I still wish the Photos face offered more complications, since it's the closest thing to a custom face generator we have on Watch right now, and I still miss Time Travel, which was removed with watchOS 5, making the big calendar complication on Infographic modular especially the poorer for it.

Performance with the new 64-bit Apple S4 system-in-package is so good I don't even notice it any more, which is an astounding thing to find myself saying after years of forgiving various degrees of slower performance because it was a tiny, highly contained watch computer. I can also typically make it through one-and-a-half to two days on the battery, unless I do more than one workout a day. Sure, it's a brand new battery, but it's also powering a better processor and bigger screen, so I'm still counting that as impressive. Yup, most impressive.

I've only used Walkie Talkie a few times in the wild over the last month — when I've been visiting friends and not wanted to shout between rooms. It still takes a while to connect and, since I'm so used to standard voice, the staccato of push-to-talk can be flummoxing. So, I end up just using FaceTime audio instead, and it works great, especially with the new mic placement and louder speaker, and of course with AirPods.

Everything just works great with Apple Watch and AirPods. Well, I was having some trouble with the Podcasts app hogging all the available space on my watch, but Apple seems to have fixed that with the last update. Though the fix does seem to have made daily shows like mine a little harder to keep locally if you aren't actually listening daily. So… listen daily, or stream, would?

The new Siri, which no longer needs you say Hey when you raise it up, is still hit and miss for me. It goes long stretches working perfectly fine then seems to go on break just often enough that I've reverted to pushing the crown to activate, because that works always.

Also, while I luckily didn't get bit by any of the recent update bugs, remote restore is something Apple really has to figure out for watchOS and soon. When you seal away the hardline, you take on the responsibility of ensuring there's a softline that works in its place. Something through the Watch app for iPhone or even — gasp — iTunes on Mac and Windows — the future has to have recovery and DFU before it forces any calls or trips to Apple. It just does.

I've left fall detection on and haven't had any false positives though some of my friends and family have. A friend of mine fell down the stairs and got hurt last week. And fall detection worked perfectly for her. She didn't end up having to call 911 but she did feel like, as expensive as the Watch is, the feature made it invaluable.

The ECG/EKG feature, the single-pad equivalent electrocardiogram, which Apple announced alongside the Series 4 as coming to U.S. customers later this year is still pending. No word or updates on that yet.

The workout detection, both starting and stopping, continues to be my favorite feature. I'm hoping its making me better about remembering to start and stop workouts but it also might just be learning me helplessness. I'd be totally fine with me just doing the workout and the machine handling all the tracking. There have been one or two occasions, typically when I've been traveling and doing outdoor walks back to back, that second walk wouldn't get auto-started, so I do still keep some track on my own. Especially now that winter has fallen, everything is covered in layers of ice and snow, and it's getting harder and harder to hit the pace requirements necessary to set off the outdoor walk workout. Snowshoe option, anyone?

Apple Watch Hermes Series 4 Conclusion

It isn't any one feature, ok, yeah, the display, but seriously, that sets the new Apple Watch apart. As always, it's the sum of the many moving parts, each getting better and more polished as hardware and software moves on. Almost all of the best new features of watchOS 5 work every bit as well on Series 3 and even 2 as they do Series 4, which is part of the overall value Apple offers for its products.

2 months later and almost 4 years in, the Apple Watch's killer features have changed somewhat for me. It used to be all about convenience. Now it also saves lives. But it does both better than ever. And, ultimately, that makes it all about time: Tracking, saving, and making sure we live to have as much of it as possible.

State of the art Apple industrial design and material science in stainless steel, black ceramics, and sapphire crystal, strapped in classic, hand-crafted, old word Hermes leather.

The juxtaposition is tremendous: Everything that's cutting edge and smart meets all that's traditional and watch. It's the Apple Watch Hermes Series 4, and absent Edition this year, it's the new highest end wrist computer in Apple's lineup. I've been using the Series 4 going on two months now, and for most of that time, the Hermes version, with several Hermes bands new and old, to go with it.

The original Apple Watch Hermès was announced in September of 2015, roughly six months after the sport, steel, and gold editions shipped. An historic partnership, it brought together and perfectly balanced the best of Apple's advanced mobile technologies and Hermès' classic leatherwork. For me, it was an even better representation of high-end silicon-meets-fashion than the yellow and rose golds.

It was Apple's first partnership for the Watch and, to this day, one of only two it's ever made. The other being Nike+ on the fitness rather than fashion end of the price range. That the two of them, and only the two of them, persist to this day show just how selective Apple is when it comes to partnering on the watch. And how committed.

Now, three years later, the partnership continues to grow, and in some surprising new directions.

Apple Watch Hermes Series 4 The Watch

From a hardware perspective, Apple Watch Hermes Series 4 is, not surprisingly, and Apple Watch Series 4. Specifically, a polished steel Apple Watch Series 4 in almost every way. The only difference is the inclusion of the Hermes brand on the back, around the black ceramic plate.

Historically, the polished stainless steel hasn't been as scratch resistant as the diamond-like carbon coated space black — which seems damn near impervious at times — and likely not even as resistant as the physical vapor deposition coating on the new gold colored steel watch.

In the weeks that I've been wearing mine I've accumulated a very few, almost unnoticeable scratches on the outer side near the buttons. They don't bother me. As I've said before, I like the Millennium Falcon style used materials look. But, if you don't, it's always something to keep in mind.

Apple Watch Hermes Series 4 The Faces

For software, the only difference remains the distinctive Hermes watch face that you can only get with the Hermes watch casing. (Sadly, Hermes bands don't come with unlock codes for the watch face.)

Apple and Hermès collaborated an an additional typeface a couple years ago. This year, they've added an entirely new look: two tone looks in Feu (indigo/white background with orange type), Rose (deep pink/indigo background with light pink type), and Ambre (Red/Pink background with yellow type). The background colors split with the minute hand, adding a little dynamism to the design.

There's only one complication spot, and only four options for it: Off, Date, Stopwatch, and World Clock. But the Hermes face isn't about being informationally dense. It's about being Hermes.

It still looks terrific, even three years on, and the new colors give it vivid new life. I switch to it whenever I want less Apple and more Watch, classy yet casual. It remains, to my eyes, the best looking analog watch face across the entire product line. And now it looks even better.

Apple Watch Hermes Series 4 The Bands

Every new Apple Watch Hermes series comes with new, distinctive bands. Some of the best, if most expensive bands Apple offers. They're all hand made, all Hermes leather, and all about as classic watchy watch as you can get.

And while they don't all appeal to my personal tastes, every year I tell myself there's no way I'm getting another one, not when the terrific Nike+ bands start at just $50, inevitably, every year, there's at least one or two styles that I find absolutely irresistible.

For Series 0, it was the cuff. For Series 2, the single deployant, for Series 3, the rallye, and now, for Series 4, the tri-color single tour. And yeah, I've gotten a new one or two every year because once they've come and gone for a season, they're often well and truly gone. A few remain over the years, but sometimes not in the same colors, and once in a while a style gets cycled out completely.

I don't love all of the Hermes straps. The double cuff was overly complicated to my eye, and the only tri-color I like is the Feu, with indigo and blanc bands and feu loops. But I like it so much it prompted me to once again order the Hermes Watch. So, well played.

The complete collection this year includes, with the 40mm stainless steel case:

Indigo/Craie/Orange Swift Leather Double Tour

Bordeaux/Rose Extrême/Rose Azalée Swift Leather Double Tour

Fauve Barenia Leather Double Tour

Bleu Indigo Swift Leather Double Tour

Bordeaux/Rose Extrême/Rose Azalée Swift Leather Single Tour

Fauve Barenia Leather Single Tour

The 44mm stainless steel case:

Indigo/Craie/Orange Swift Leather Single Tour

Bleu Indigo Swift Leather Single Tour

Fauve Barenia Leather Single Tour

Fauve Grained Barenia Leather Single Tour Rallye

Ébène Barenia Leather Single Tour Deployment Buckle

Fauve Barenia Leather Single Tour Deployment Buckle

You can still get the Feu double and single tours separately — I've had the single for a couple years and love it — and there's also a just-released 40mm Ambre/Capucine/Rose Azalée Swift Leather Double Tour and 44mm Ambre/Capucine/Rose Azalée Swift Leather Single Tour.

The only downside is that the colored leathers never start off as soft and supple and never end up aging and patina-ing as well as the raw leather straps. They look better, they just don't feel as good. But that's the story of fashion.

I also wish Apple and Hermes wouldn't restrict some styles to some sizes, since anatomy and taste aren't bound to small and large stereotypes.

I've been wearing the tri-color since I got it, because it's new and because it looks so damn good. But, I can see myself going back to the cuff and the deployant, and probably the rallye as well for extended periods just because of how great they feel.

While Apple Watch Hermes bands are, as I said, the most expensive bands Apple currently offers, I should point out they're not expensive by Hermes standards. If you get a non-Apple watch from Hermes, be it single or double tour, you'll likely pay a lot more for the strap that comes with it. They're also not expensive by watch standards. I have several friends who collect and they have some truly obscene, if not downright offensive stories about how much they've paid for classic straps.

If Apple Watch is just a fitness accessory for you, or just something to hold your wrist computer on with, then by all means stick to the sport bands and loops or whatever you can find on Amazon. If it's a watch in the watch collector sense of the word, then the Hermes bands are a great way to show it off. Especially since Apple has kept the same bands compatible with all watches going on 4 years in a row now, and hopefully for at least a few more if not many to come.

As with every Apple Watch Hermes since the Series 2, you also get a Sport Loop in Hermes Orange in every box. Leather is fantastic but not for workouts and certainly not for swims. So having the fluoroelastomer band, which you can easily swap in and out, remains a terrific addition.

Apple Watch Hermes Series 4 Two Months Later

I've been wearing an Apple Watch Series 4 with watchOS 5 for just over 10 weeks now, including a couple weeks with the aluminum, gold steel, Nike+, and now, for the last month, Hermès. I like the lightness and the feel of the aluminum models best but the look of the stainless steel, since that's still the only material that actually matches all the lugs on all the bands Apple sells.

Lug mismatches bother some people not at all and others immensely, all other things being equal, I'd still rather they match than don't, and still wish Apple would find some way to support better matches for the blacks and golds.

The taptics — the taps you get to alert you to notifications — still feel better to me than previous generation steel watches, which is great.

I love the bigger, edge-to-curved-edge display. I went back to wearing my Series 3 for a few days because the best way to tell if you really benefit from a new feature is to take it away, and it suddenly felt small and cramped in a way it never did before.

I missed everything about how expansive the new display was, most of all the new Infograph faces that I've come to use as dashboards for my day. Rumor has it Apple is going to be adding updated versions of some of the classic complications, like Messages and Mail, to Infograph as well, which will only make it better.

I use the new Hermes face whenever I go out all fancy like as well, but not really any of the other faces, including the new fire, vapor, and water faces, unless I'm doing a tech demo to show off the new big screen design.

I still wish the Photos face offered more complications, since it's the closest thing to a custom face generator we have on Watch right now, and I still miss Time Travel, which was removed with watchOS 5, making the big calendar complication on Infographic modular especially the poorer for it.

Performance with the new 64-bit Apple S4 system-in-package is so good I don't even notice it any more, which is an astounding thing to find myself saying after years of forgiving various degrees of slower performance because it was a tiny, highly contained watch computer. I can also typically make it through one-and-a-half to two days on the battery, unless I do more than one workout a day. Sure, it's a brand new battery, but it's also powering a better processor and bigger screen, so I'm still counting that as impressive. Yup, most impressive.

I've only used Walkie Talkie a few times in the wild over the last month — when I've been visiting friends and not wanted to shout between rooms. It still takes a while to connect and, since I'm so used to standard voice, the staccato of push-to-talk can be flummoxing. So, I end up just using FaceTime audio instead, and it works great, especially with the new mic placement and louder speaker, and of course with AirPods.

Everything just works great with Apple Watch and AirPods. Well, I was having some trouble with the Podcasts app hogging all the available space on my watch, but Apple seems to have fixed that with the last update. Though the fix does seem to have made daily shows like mine a little harder to keep locally if you aren't actually listening daily. So… listen daily, or stream, would?

The new Siri, which no longer needs you say Hey when you raise it up, is still hit and miss for me. It goes long stretches working perfectly fine then seems to go on break just often enough that I've reverted to pushing the crown to activate, because that works always.

Also, while I luckily didn't get bit by any of the recent update bugs, remote restore is something Apple really has to figure out for watchOS and soon. When you seal away the hardline, you take on the responsibility of ensuring there's a softline that works in its place. Something through the Watch app for iPhone or even — gasp — iTunes on Mac and Windows — the future has to have recovery and DFU before it forces any calls or trips to Apple. It just does.

I've left fall detection on and haven't had any false positives though some of my friends and family have. A friend of mine fell down the stairs and got hurt last week. And fall detection worked perfectly for her. She didn't end up having to call 911 but she did feel like, as expensive as the Watch is, the feature made it invaluable.

The ECG/EKG feature, the single-pad equivalent electrocardiogram, which Apple announced alongside the Series 4 as coming to U.S. customers later this year is still pending. No word or updates on that yet.

The workout detection, both starting and stopping, continues to be my favorite feature. I'm hoping its making me better about remembering to start and stop workouts but it also might just be learning me helplessness. I'd be totally fine with me just doing the workout and the machine handling all the tracking. There have been one or two occasions, typically when I've been traveling and doing outdoor walks back to back, that second walk wouldn't get auto-started, so I do still keep some track on my own. Especially now that winter has fallen, everything is covered in layers of ice and snow, and it's getting harder and harder to hit the pace requirements necessary to set off the outdoor walk workout. Snowshoe option, anyone?

Apple Watch Hermes Series 4 Conclusion

It isn't any one feature, ok, yeah, the display, but seriously, that sets the new Apple Watch apart. As always, it's the sum of the many moving parts, each getting better and more polished as hardware and software moves on. Almost all of the best new features of watchOS 5 work every bit as well on Series 3 and even 2 as they do Series 4, which is part of the overall value Apple offers for its products.

2 months later and almost 4 years in, the Apple Watch's killer features have changed somewhat for me. It used to be all about convenience. Now it also saves lives. But it does both better than ever. And, ultimately, that makes it all about time: Tracking, saving, and making sure we live to have as much of it as possible.

So, let's talk about how developers are gaming the App Store and why it matters to the future of the platform. Any one of these tactics might seem somewhat bland individually, but when tens of thousands of apps deploy multiple tactics across many categories of apps, the impact can be measured in hundreds of millions of users and likely billions of dollars.

From keyword squatting to tricking people into subscribing to high-priced junk ware, none of this is good for Apple, developers, or their shared customers. Only Apple can affect change here, though.

Phil Schiller runs the U.S. App Store. Eddy Cue still runs the international App Stores. It'll likely take some coordination across both their organizations and many of their teams to make the environment less profitable and more caustic to scammers.

But it needs to happen.

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Over ten years later and Apple still can't seem to shut down even basic, obvious App Store scams.

So, let's talk about how developers are gaming the App Store and why it matters to the future of the platform. Any one of these tactics might seem somewhat bland individually, but when tens of thousands of apps deploy multiple tactics across many categories of apps, the impact can be measured in hundreds of millions of users and likely billions of dollars.

From keyword squatting to tricking people into subscribing to high-priced junk ware, none of this is good for Apple, developers, or their shared customers. Only Apple can affect change here, though.

Phil Schiller runs the U.S. App Store. Eddy Cue still runs the international App Stores. It'll likely take some coordination across both their organizations and many of their teams to make the environment less profitable and more caustic to scammers.

With 47 apps and 170 million downloads on iOS, kids developer Budge Studios launches the all new, all grown up Budge Games to bring big-screen action to gamers of all ages.{.intro}

The Transformers franchise is getting a much-needed reboot. Gone is the almost indistinguishable steel and explosive chaos of the previous films and in its place, a solo movie focusing on perhaps the most relatable robot in the original series — Bumblebee.

Coming with it is another transformation, this time for a Montreal game studio co-founded by Michael Elman and David Lipes. For years, their studio, Budge, has focused on turning some of the most recognizable children's characters in the world into some of the best children's games on iOS. And it's been hugely successful at it, growing from a small group of friends in 2010 to 115 people, and 47 apps and over 170 million downloads on iOS today.

But now, as the Transformers movie returns to its roots, Budge is growing up and making a new Bumblebee game for a new generation. Scratch that: For all generations. The new team, coined Budge Games, is starting off with 25 people and one title: Transformers Bumblebee Overdrive!.

And you can tell, just as soon as the new Budge Games logo hits the screen, that you're in for something retro-future fresh.

An 80s-style arcade game — such a perfect fit for one of the most iconic cartoons of the 90s! — that pits Bumblebee and some of his most famous fellow Autobots again, you guess it, the evil forces of the Decepticons.

You get to race. You get to transform. You get to fight. And you get to go back for all of the above, using not only Bee, but the big bot himself, Optimus Prime, as well as Sideswipe, Arcee, Mirage, Ratchet, Jazz, Novastar, Moonracer, and Prowl.

I had the chance to talk to Elman and Lipes about not only the new game but their new direction in gaming, and their excitement was evident on both counts. Children's games are still near and dear to their all of their hearts but stretching out to explore new styles and new audiences always makes you fall in love with what you do all over again.

And it sounds like this is only the beginning.

Bumblebee the movie hits theaters on December 21. Transformers Bumblebee Overdrive! is in the App Store now.

With 47 apps and 170 million downloads on iOS, kids developer Budge Studios launches the all new, all grown up Budge Games to bring big-screen action to gamers of all ages.{.intro}

The Transformers franchise is getting a much-needed reboot. Gone is the almost indistinguishable steel and explosive chaos of the previous films and in its place, a solo movie focusing on perhaps the most relatable robot in the original series — Bumblebee.

Coming with it is another transformation, this time for a Montreal game studio co-founded by Michael Elman and David Lipes. For years, their studio, Budge, has focused on turning some of the most recognizable children's characters in the world into some of the best children's games on iOS. And it's been hugely successful at it, growing from a small group of friends in 2010 to 115 people, and 47 apps and over 170 million downloads on iOS today.

But now, as the Transformers movie returns to its roots, Budge is growing up and making a new Bumblebee game for a new generation. Scratch that: For all generations. The new team, coined Budge Games, is starting off with 25 people and one title: Transformers Bumblebee Overdrive!.

And you can tell, just as soon as the new Budge Games logo hits the screen, that you're in for something retro-future fresh.

An 80s-style arcade game — such a perfect fit for one of the most iconic cartoons of the 90s! — that pits Bumblebee and some of his most famous fellow Autobots again, you guess it, the evil forces of the Decepticons.

You get to race. You get to transform. You get to fight. And you get to go back for all of the above, using not only Bee, but the big bot himself, Optimus Prime, as well as Sideswipe, Arcee, Mirage, Ratchet, Jazz, Novastar, Moonracer, and Prowl.

I had the chance to talk to Elman and Lipes about not only the new game but their new direction in gaming, and their excitement was evident on both counts. Children's games are still near and dear to their all of their hearts but stretching out to explore new styles and new audiences always makes you fall in love with what you do all over again.

And it sounds like this is only the beginning.

Bumblebee the movie hits theaters on December 21. Transformers Bumblebee Overdrive! is in the App Store now.

AirPower was sneak previewed in 2017 as Apple's extension of Qi inductive charging, capable of replenishing up to two iPhones or an iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods. So, where is it?

AirPower was announced alongside the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and iPhone X at Apple's September event… in 2017. It was a preview, not a release, and Apple said it would only be available in 2018. Since then, the iPhone X has come and gone and another September event along with it. Now it's November 2018 — late November — and AirPower is still nowhere to be found.

2017: AirPower Year Zero

Recently, when Apple makes a big change, it likes to announce a big halo product to go with it. The best example is AirPods. iPhone 7 might have ditched the headphone jack but it gave us one of the most innovative consumer electronic products we've seen in the last few years. Custom W1 chips — tiny computers that enable instant pairing, switching between linked devices, and rock solid syncing between left and right, no cables needed.

They were announced during the September event in 2016 as coming later that fall. Apple even provided pre-release versions to reviewers to test so they could have the complete iPhone 7 and Apple Watch Series 2 experience. They ended up shipping late by a couple months. Available for order December 16 and in stores by December 20.

AirPower was probably meant to be similar if not the same. iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and iPhone X. They ditched the metal backs for glass and gave us Qi-based inductive charging. Nothing innovative on its own — phones have been charging inductively for a decade — but Apple seemed to want to show not only its commitment to the technology but its commitment to pushing it forward. That was AirPower. Not just an inductive pad or stand capable of charging the new iPhones, but a super-pad capable of charging up to two iPhones, or an iPhone, an Apple Watch 3 or later, and even a pair of AirPods in a new, inductive charging case all their own.

It would change the narrative from Apple finally joining the inductive charging club to Apple being Apple and doing inductive charging in a slicker, cleverer way than anyone previously in the club.

They weren't announced as coming later that year but as coming the following year. Briefly, spring of the following year on one web page. But everywhere else — and eventually an updated version of that page too — simply next year.

2018: AirPower Year One

According to a tipster at American retailer Best Buy, Apple is preparing to launch the AirPower wireless charging mat and new AirPods wireless charging case in March, claiming that Best Buy will stock AirPower from day one online and in-store.

Regarding that, as information reliable, likewise, AirPower is said to be due to sell it in March and to Qi wireless-charge with Apple Watch Series 3 at AirPower, it is detected with a special wave and it is made possible to Qi wireless-charge as the same when Apple Watch Magnetic Charging Cable is used.

Apple didn't say when in 2018 it would release AirPower, but engineers hoped to launch the charger by June. The aim now is to put it on sale before or in September, according to one of the people. In recent months, some Apple engineers have ramped up testing of the device by using it as their charger at the office, another person said.

AirPower still remained on Apple's website, albeit only on the AirPods page and only in reference to the currently unavailable wireless charging case.

AirPower Wireless Charger: This is Apple's charging pad that can simultaneously charge an iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods without plugging them in. The company faced development challenges, but plans to launch it as soon as this month, Bloomberg News reported earlier this year.

Fall came and went, and the September and October events, new iPhones and iPads galore. But, yeah, still no AirPower.

What I've heard, third-hand but from multiple little birdies, is that AirPower really is well and truly fucked. Something about the multi-coil design getting too hot — way too hot. There are engineers who looked at AirPower's design and said it could never work, thermally, and now those same engineers have that "told you so" smug look on their faces. Last year Apple was apparently swayed by arguments that they could figure out a way to make it not get hot. They were, clearly, wrong. I think they've either had to go completely back to the drawing board and start over with an entirely different design, or they've decided to give up and they just don't want to say so.

On September 16, 2018, Sonny Dickson, previously best known for finding demo units of pre-production iPhone and other devices from the Chinese supply chain, posted what he heard was going on with AirPower:

Currently the device produces far too much heat, which causes performance setbacks, and can affect the ability of the devices to charge if they become too warm in the process. It also affects the ability of Apple's custom charging chip, which runs a stripped down version of iOS, to function as intended.

The mechanism being used for multi-device charging, which we can confirm is comprised of between 21 and 24 power coils of various sizes to accommodate the three main products to be charged (AirPods equipped with a so-far-nonexistent wireless charging accessory case, iPhone, and Apple Watch), which are broken into three identical charging groups, is proving extremely difficult to build or refine, and has been resulting in a significant amount of interference up to this point, which reduces the efficiency of the charging mat, and contributes to the heat issues that engineers are facing.

According to two independent sources, Apple has cancelled AirPower as we know it, and it will not appear at an event the company is planning for October.
The decision to cancel the device was made within the last month-and-a-half, and discussions about the next move have only recently begun.

People familiar with the project said the company is planning to begin work on a less ambitious wireless charging accessory for launch in early 2019. It is currently undecided whether a future device will inherit the AirPower moniker or if the brand will be trashed.

Apple Watch 4 came with a version of the Milanese Loop that could be opened up, seemingly so it could work with AirPower. That was no doubt planned well in advance, though. But with the launch of iPhone XS and iPhone XR, however, AirPower remained on the documentation included in the packaging, something far easier to change far later in release cycle, especially for the typically fastidious Apple.

Charging

Place iPhone with screen facing up on AirPower or a Qi-certified wireless charger.

According to Guilllermo Rambo, writing for 9to5Mac on September 20, it also remained in the code:

Looking into iOS 12.1, we noticed that the component of iOS responsible for managing the charging interface that appears when using AirPower has been updated, which means that Apple is still actively working on the project.

According to Kuo, Apple could launch new AirPods and the AirPower either late in the fourth quarter of 2018 or early in the first quarter of 2019, but he doesn't yet know the company's specific plans.

Apple has launched products in December before. AirPods, of course, in 2016, and the Smart Battery Case for iPhone 6s in 2015. But it's certainly not the norm. HomePod, which was announced at WWDC in June of 2017 as coming later that year, then delayed early February 2018 after AirPlay 2 proved more challenging to nail down than initially expected.

2019: AirPower Year Three

If a December launch isn't in the cards for AirPower, and the lack of noise leading up to the last month of the year makes that seem increasingly likely, than early next year, be it February or March is the next likely window.

If the project really is in trouble or even canceled, as rumored, and another project under the same name or for a similar if simpler purpose isn't rapidly ramped up instead, then it be could well be longer.

"Great artists ship." "Apple ships." Is one of the core tenants of the company. But, delays on everything from AirPods to HomePod, and most especially AirPower has put that tenant to the test. That might be why there were no special halo accessories announced alongside this year's iPhone or iPad, New modular Mac Pro teased way back in 2017 not withstanding: Apple has learned the dangers of deviating from its ship-don't-tell strategy, and the pain it can cause them when forecasts don't match finish lines.

Where is AirPower? I'll do you one better: Why is AirPower?

AirPods challenged and changed our expectations when it came to how intangible wireless headphones really could feel. Even at its best, AirPower probably wouldn't have done that for inductive charging. Not the way ubiquity would. Not the way having every table in every coffee shop and restaurant, ever tray in every ride-share and plane, in having inductive charging everywhere would.

And that'll take more than a charger that can handle a wide variety of different devices. That'll take a wide variety of devices that can all be charged the same way.

AirPower was sneak previewed in 2017 as Apple's extension of Qi inductive charging, capable of replenishing up to two iPhones or an iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods. So, where is it?

AirPower was announced alongside the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and iPhone X at Apple's September event… in 2017. It was a preview, not a release, and Apple said it would only be available in 2018. Since then, the iPhone X has come and gone and another September event along with it. Now it's November 2018 — late November — and AirPower is still nowhere to be found.

2017: AirPower Year Zero

Recently, when Apple makes a big change, it likes to announce a big halo product to go with it. The best example is AirPods. iPhone 7 might have ditched the headphone jack but it gave us one of the most innovative consumer electronic products we've seen in the last few years. Custom W1 chips — tiny computers that enable instant pairing, switching between linked devices, and rock solid syncing between left and right, no cables needed.

They were announced during the September event in 2016 as coming later that fall. Apple even provided pre-release versions to reviewers to test so they could have the complete iPhone 7 and Apple Watch Series 2 experience. They ended up shipping late by a couple months. Available for order December 16 and in stores by December 20.

AirPower was probably meant to be similar if not the same. iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and iPhone X. They ditched the metal backs for glass and gave us Qi-based inductive charging. Nothing innovative on its own — phones have been charging inductively for a decade — but Apple seemed to want to show not only its commitment to the technology but its commitment to pushing it forward. That was AirPower. Not just an inductive pad or stand capable of charging the new iPhones, but a super-pad capable of charging up to two iPhones, or an iPhone, an Apple Watch 3 or later, and even a pair of AirPods in a new, inductive charging case all their own.

It would change the narrative from Apple finally joining the inductive charging club to Apple being Apple and doing inductive charging in a slicker, cleverer way than anyone previously in the club.

They weren't announced as coming later that year but as coming the following year. Briefly, spring of the following year on one web page. But everywhere else — and eventually an updated version of that page too — simply next year.

2018: AirPower Year One

According to a tipster at American retailer Best Buy, Apple is preparing to launch the AirPower wireless charging mat and new AirPods wireless charging case in March, claiming that Best Buy will stock AirPower from day one online and in-store.

Regarding that, as information reliable, likewise, AirPower is said to be due to sell it in March and to Qi wireless-charge with Apple Watch Series 3 at AirPower, it is detected with a special wave and it is made possible to Qi wireless-charge as the same when Apple Watch Magnetic Charging Cable is used.

Apple didn't say when in 2018 it would release AirPower, but engineers hoped to launch the charger by June. The aim now is to put it on sale before or in September, according to one of the people. In recent months, some Apple engineers have ramped up testing of the device by using it as their charger at the office, another person said.

AirPower still remained on Apple's website, albeit only on the AirPods page and only in reference to the currently unavailable wireless charging case.

AirPower Wireless Charger: This is Apple's charging pad that can simultaneously charge an iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods without plugging them in. The company faced development challenges, but plans to launch it as soon as this month, Bloomberg News reported earlier this year.

Fall came and went, and the September and October events, new iPhones and iPads galore. But, yeah, still no AirPower.

What I've heard, third-hand but from multiple little birdies, is that AirPower really is well and truly fucked. Something about the multi-coil design getting too hot — way too hot. There are engineers who looked at AirPower's design and said it could never work, thermally, and now those same engineers have that "told you so" smug look on their faces. Last year Apple was apparently swayed by arguments that they could figure out a way to make it not get hot. They were, clearly, wrong. I think they've either had to go completely back to the drawing board and start over with an entirely different design, or they've decided to give up and they just don't want to say so.

On September 16, 2018, Sonny Dickson, previously best known for finding demo units of pre-production iPhone and other devices from the Chinese supply chain, posted what he heard was going on with AirPower:

Currently the device produces far too much heat, which causes performance setbacks, and can affect the ability of the devices to charge if they become too warm in the process. It also affects the ability of Apple's custom charging chip, which runs a stripped down version of iOS, to function as intended.

The mechanism being used for multi-device charging, which we can confirm is comprised of between 21 and 24 power coils of various sizes to accommodate the three main products to be charged (AirPods equipped with a so-far-nonexistent wireless charging accessory case, iPhone, and Apple Watch), which are broken into three identical charging groups, is proving extremely difficult to build or refine, and has been resulting in a significant amount of interference up to this point, which reduces the efficiency of the charging mat, and contributes to the heat issues that engineers are facing.

According to two independent sources, Apple has cancelled AirPower as we know it, and it will not appear at an event the company is planning for October.
The decision to cancel the device was made within the last month-and-a-half, and discussions about the next move have only recently begun.

People familiar with the project said the company is planning to begin work on a less ambitious wireless charging accessory for launch in early 2019. It is currently undecided whether a future device will inherit the AirPower moniker or if the brand will be trashed.

Apple Watch 4 came with a version of the Milanese Loop that could be opened up, seemingly so it could work with AirPower. That was no doubt planned well in advance, though. But with the launch of iPhone XS and iPhone XR, however, AirPower remained on the documentation included in the packaging, something far easier to change far later in release cycle, especially for the typically fastidious Apple.

Charging

Place iPhone with screen facing up on AirPower or a Qi-certified wireless charger.

According to Guilllermo Rambo, writing for 9to5Mac on September 20, it also remained in the code:

Looking into iOS 12.1, we noticed that the component of iOS responsible for managing the charging interface that appears when using AirPower has been updated, which means that Apple is still actively working on the project.

According to Kuo, Apple could launch new AirPods and the AirPower either late in the fourth quarter of 2018 or early in the first quarter of 2019, but he doesn't yet know the company's specific plans.

Apple has launched products in December before. AirPods, of course, in 2016, and the Smart Battery Case for iPhone 6s in 2015. But it's certainly not the norm. HomePod, which was announced at WWDC in June of 2017 as coming later that year, then delayed early February 2018 after AirPlay 2 proved more challenging to nail down than initially expected.

2019: AirPower Year Three

If a December launch isn't in the cards for AirPower, and the lack of noise leading up to the last month of the year makes that seem increasingly likely, than early next year, be it February or March is the next likely window.

If the project really is in trouble or even canceled, as rumored, and another project under the same name or for a similar if simpler purpose isn't rapidly ramped up instead, then it be could well be longer.

"Great artists ship." "Apple ships." Is one of the core tenants of the company. But, delays on everything from AirPods to HomePod, and most especially AirPower has put that tenant to the test. That might be why there were no special halo accessories announced alongside this year's iPhone or iPad, New modular Mac Pro teased way back in 2017 not withstanding: Apple has learned the dangers of deviating from its ship-don't-tell strategy, and the pain it can cause them when forecasts don't match finish lines.

Where is AirPower? I'll do you one better: Why is AirPower?

AirPods challenged and changed our expectations when it came to how intangible wireless headphones really could feel. Even at its best, AirPower probably wouldn't have done that for inductive charging. Not the way ubiquity would. Not the way having every table in every coffee shop and restaurant, ever tray in every ride-share and plane, in having inductive charging everywhere would.

And that'll take more than a charger that can handle a wide variety of different devices. That'll take a wide variety of devices that can all be charged the same way.

The company line is that it's not ergonomic — that having to reach up and across to touch the screen of a Mac to get things done isn't only inefficient but potentially injurious to humans. It's not about having to, though. It's about being able to. Adding multitouch to the Mac doesn't remove the existing keyboard or mouse controls any more than making the Smart Keyboard for iPad Pro removed the taps and swipes.

What Apple keeps saying about touchscreen Macs

There have been 3rd party attempts to make Macs if not multitouch than at least basically touch over the years, including the ModBook, which tore the notebook down and rebuilt it with a digitizer, and various touch-detection overlays for Macs used as kiosks in the hospitality industries. But there's been nothing from Apple. Nothing and more nothing.

Lke I mentioned in the ARM MacBook video, link in the description, Apple is a multibillion dollar company — billion as is money in the bank, not trillion as in market cap, commentor friends! — and can afford to explore, prototype, test, and tweak any and everything bloggers, social media types, and YouTubers can imagine, and often years before we imagine them.

In the case of the multitouch Mac, the company has said just as much over the years.

I think anything can be forced to converge, but the problem is that products are about tradeoffs, and you begin to make tradeoffs to the point where what you have left at the end of the day doesn't please anyone. You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator but y'know, those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user.

From the ergonomic standpoint we have studied this pretty extensively and we believe that on a desktop scenario where you have a fixed keyboard, having to reach up to do touch interfaces is uncomfortable," says Schiller. "iOS from its start has been designed as a multi-touch experience — you don't have the things you have in a mouse-driven interface, like a cursor to move around, or teeny little 'close' boxes that you can't hit with your finger. The Mac OS has been designed from day one for an indirect pointing mechanism. These two worlds are different on purpose, and that's a good thing — we can optimize around the best experience for each and not try to mesh them together into a least-common-denominator experience."

Steven Levy, speaking again with Phil Schiller, this time for Wired in 2016 following the release of the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar instead of a touch screen:

"We think of the whole platform," he says. "If we were to do Multi-Touch on the screen of the notebook, that wouldn't be enough — then the desktop wouldn't work that way." And touch on the desktop, he says, would be a disaster. "Can you imagine a 27-inch iMac where you have to reach over the air to try to touch and do things? That becomes absurd." He also explains that such a move would mean totally redesigning the menu bar for fingers, in a way that would ruin the experience for those using pointer devices like the touch or mouse. "You can't optimize for both," he says. "It's the lowest common denominator thinking."

Apple came to this conclusion by testing if touch screens made sense on the Mac. "Our instincts were that it didn't, but, what the heck, we could be wrong—so our teams worked on that for a number of times over the years," says Schiller. "We've absolutely come away with the belief that it isn't the right thing to do. Our instincts were correct."

Shara Tibken and Connie Guglielmo, speaking with Apple's Chief Creative Office, Jony Ive for CNet at the same time:

It's not because Apple can't make a touchscreen Mac. It's because Apple decided a touchscreen on a Mac wasn't "particularly useful," says Ive. And on the MacBook Pro, which keeps getting thinner and lighter, it could be "a burden."

And with Phil Schiller:

Apple says it doesn't have a problem with the Mac and iPad overlapping, since each approaches tasks in a different way. They won't remove the iconic menu bar from the Mac desktop, for instance, just as they'd never add it to the iPad. "It is great to provide two different ways to solve some of the same things, but they also do very unique things that the other doesn't," Schiller says. "Having them separate allows us to explore both, versus trying to force them into one — and only one — model."

Jon Packowski, writing for Buzzfeed following Apple's new Mac Pro tease in April of 2017:

"No," Schiller said when asked if Apple would consider building such a thing. "Touch doesn't even register on the list of things pro users are interested in talking about. They're interested in things like performance and storage and expandability."

Lauren Goode, speaking with Apple's senior Vice President of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, for Wired in June of 2018, following the announcement of macOS Mojave and UIKit apps for Mac:

When addressing my question about whether iOS apps moving to MacOS is a natural precursor to touchscreen Macs, Federighi told me he's "not into touchscreens" on PCs and doesn't anticipate he ever will be. "We really feel that the ergonomics of using a Mac are that your hands are rested on a surface, and that lifting your arm up to poke a screen is a pretty fatiguing thing to do," he said.

Federighi added that he doesn't think the touchscreen laptops out there today—which he referred to as "experiments"—have been compelling. "I don't think we've looked at any of the other guys to date and said, how fast can we get there?"

So, on one hand, when Apple executives say they don't like multitouch Macs, because gorilla arms, it's because they're some of the very few people in the world who've actually used multitouch Macs in the lab. It's not an idea or an abstract to them. It's one of the thousand things they said no to before saying yes to the iPad Pro.

On the other hand, you have touch screen laptops, or laptop-like products from Microsoft, Google, and others that get a lot of attention from tech media and creative pros alike.

But Apple executives are talking about the Mac as it is, with an interface that goes back to the Xerox Park days, to the NeXT days, to the foundations idealized around a mouse an pointer, with tiny touch targets never meant for direct finger manipulation.

The challenge of the touch screen Mac

To bring multitouch to the Mac, Apple would have to redesign macOS and its interface to make fingers a first class citizen when it comes to experience and interaction.

The first problem there is the assertion that making things like the Mac menubar more touch-friendly would force them to be less mouse and pointer friendly. The second is, even if you don't believe a compromise could be reached, the second problem is the time and resources it would take to reach it.

It took Microsoft years to make Windows touch friendly, never mind touch first or even touch equal. Literally years in the desert, through Windows 8, to get to Windows 10. But they had to do it. They absolutely had to. Windows Mobile, Microsoft's original touch-ish-based operating system for mobile, didn't survive content with iOS and absolutely not with Android. Despite frequent reboots and compatibility breaks, through Windows Mobile 6.5, Windows Phone 7 and 8, it just hit a brick wall on phones and was never given a chance on tablets. It inspired a lot of the later, more digitally authentic design of iOS and Android, but it itself never succeeded in the market. So, Microsoft absolutely had to make traditional Windows go touch.

Google, by contrast, is a far younger company and never had a traditional computer business or operating system to worry about. It could buy Android, start work on a BlackBerry-style device, see the iPhone, pivot hard into multitouch, and go all-in from pretty much the start. It could also take Apple's WebKit, make Chrome, fork WebKit, make Blink, and basically make the browser the operating system for a large swath of the increasingly web-based world. And multitouch web browsers have been a thing since Safari on the original iPhone.

Apple has a successful traditional computer business with the Mac and a successful multitouch-first mobile business with iOS. It could abandon the former and go all-in on the latter — some analysts , in the name of focus, repeatedly call on Apple to do just that — but there's no existential threat forcing Apple to do that just to survive the great interface transition of the last decade. It's already survived just fine.

Creative pros, at least some of them, are looking at products like the SurfaceBook and Surface Studio with lust in their hearts. They may be niche, something that Microsoft's modular model makes easier because so many other vendors can fill the mainstream, where only Apple makes the Mac. That can still accrue mindshare, but maybe not enough to compel Apple to act.

Likewise, the first generation of kids raised on iPad are growing up. They're not touch-immigrants like us traditional computer user folks. They're touch-native. They expect screens to be like iPhones and iPads. They expect them to respond to touch. And when they don't, there's no consideration given to ergonomics or history — they simply think the screen is broken.

Apple no doubt believe anyone trying touch will rapidly discover it doesn't work on the Mac, compartmentalize the same way they do basketball from soccer rules when it comes to hands and feet on a ball, and just get on with using both the way nature and Apple intended.

But what if they don't? Nobody wants touch on a Mac. Once upon a time, Steve Jobs said nobody wanted video on an iPod. Then we got video iPods. Nobody reads books. Then we got iBooks. If you see a stylus you blew it. Now we have Apple Pencil. Like I said in the MacBook Arm video, for Apple, nothing unannounced exists. And nothing Apple hasn't done is worth doing. Until it is.

The potential solutions to the touch screen Mac

So, lets say regardless of what the Mac market was or is, the Mac market becomes a multitouch market. How could Apple address that?

The iOS Mac

The easiest answer, of course, is to just run iOS on Mac-like hardware. At least at the lower-end. An iOS MacBook is something that, according to rumors, has been in the labs for years. An iOS Mac mini isn't hard to imagine either, especially with Apple getting back into the display business. If Apple does what it previously did, and makes an iMac and stand-alone version of the same display, it could field a really interesting range of multitouch non-Macs that would appeal to iPad Pro users and even those with Surface envy but who also want and value more traditional clamshell, box, and all-in-one form factors. That includes people who find traditional computers off-putting, but also creatives who find multitouch increasingly essential.

And having iOS on the mobile and entry-level end and macOS on high end, each with its own functionality, wouldn't be any more confusing than having iOS on an iPad Pro and macOS on an iMac.

Some people might want real macOS on real multitouch, especially if they want to go from the terminal to the finger and back, but the vast majority of people now and certainly going forward probably really don't. And as iOS gets more and more capable, pushed by the iPad Pro, that'll become more and more true.

And that's another easy answer — as iPad Pro becomes more mature, rather than being the touch screen Mac, it can become the thing that legitimately eliminates the need for a touch screen Mac.

iOS on Mac

A dual-booting device, one that could run iOS in tablet mode and macOS in notebook mode would no doubt be compelling to some. Though the complexity of that idea probably punches every toaster/fridge alarm in Apple's park.

Likewise a MacBook that still doesn't have touch on the screen but has even more touch than the current bar: The entire keyboard gone virtual. What's essentially a macOS display standing up and what's essentially an iPad display — one that can become a full-on Taptic keyboard or any control surface you need any time you need it. One that uses proprioceptive lies to fool your fingers and brains into thinking its real the way the force touch trackpad does today. That's sci-fi that's always getting closer to being sci-fact, but is also probably something traditional Mac users would hate even more than butterfly and dome switches.

So…

The Multitouch Mac

The harder answer is to start adding multitouch to macOS. Harder not just because it would require solving interface problems like the Mac menubar for multitouch, but because of the resources it would take to solve it. Yes, even Apple, with billions of dollars in the bank and a market caps that flirts at a trillion dollars simply can't do everything it wants, not all at once.

The constraint here is engineers. Apple needs engineers and designers to come up with, implement, test, and deploy all the new code and all the new paradigms that would make multitouch Macs a great product. There aren't that many top-flight engineers to begin with. Of the ones that are, not all of them want to work in Cupertino, California, or for Apple instead of a company or startup with greater stock option growth or IPO potential. And competition for the ones who do want to work for bigger companies in the valley, between Apple, Google, and Facebook, is fierce. Even when Apple is the first choice for those engineers, working on macOS may not be. Not when some see it as the past and the upcoming reality OS and autonomous technologies projects as the future.

Even though Apple has some of the best engineers in the world, it doesn't have all of them, and putting the ones it does have on retrofitting multitouch to macOS means those same engineers can't work on other projects, including the next versions of iOS, and the special projects that come after that. Which is a huge opportunity cost.

Just like having those engineers work on performance last year for iOS 12 meant new features, like the rumored new springboard, got pushed to next year.

It's easy for me or anyone in tech media to say "just add touchscreen to the Mac" like all Apple has to do is buy a touch layer and slip it under the glass. But, we don't have to design and engineer the staggering amount of work that would actually have to go into making it all work.

Apple could absolutely do it, but even if Apple could do it much, much faster than Microsoft with Windows 8 and 10, would it be worth losing a year on iOS, two years? While Google is plowing ahead with Android and its next-generation underpinnings, Fuchsia?

The MacBook Beyond

That brings us to an even harder answer, if briefly, because I intend to go deeper into it in a future video: Apple's own next-generation operating system. There have been rumors of rOS, the reality operating system that may one day power Apple Glasses and other products to follow. There have also been rumors of a TitanOS that'll power Apple's autonomous future. Though some of the grandeur aspirations behind that no doubt changed when Apple refocused the project a couple of years ago.

There's a future where iOS and/or macOS simply keep evolving, having old modules like HFS+ swapped out for new ones like APFS, having daemons re-written, frameworks improved, and otherwise, year after year, step by step, becoming what's next.

There's also a future where, rather than merge macOS and iOS or replace macOS with iOS, but replace both with something new. A next NeXT, so to speak. That would be an incalculable amount of work, way more than retrofitting multitouch onto the Mac or adding full keyboard and trackpad support to iOS, but it would also leave Apple with something far more interesting: A new stack, from kernel to interface, that is completely modern and input agnostic. Something that provides local authentication, cloud connection, and simply understands whatever input methods are available to it, from keyboard, to mouse, to multitouch, to the AI and AR future we're racing towards. But, again, more on that soonish…

macOS Touch

Apple could make the Mac a little bit multitouch. Again, I realize it's way easier to say something like that than to be the person in charge of implementing it, but here's the thought:

Give Macs a touch screen that enables gesture navigation. Basically, the same level of functionality the gestures on a Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad currently allow, and let them poke, swipe, and pinch the screen, if and when they really want to.

Flick up a page in Safari. Zoom into a map. Tap to pause or play a movie. That sort of thing.

Now, that could be a complete mess. If the Mac supports some gestures, people could easily expect it to support complete, full-on multitouch, and when they find out it doesn't it could seem just as broken as no touch at all.

But it's also possible people are smart and will adapt to the constraints and find it to be exactly what they need.

The Mac Pencil

Another option is adding Apple Pencil support to macOS. The Pencil is as precise an input tool as the mouse or trackpad, and could bring all the great pressure sensitive features from iPad Pro roaring onto the Mac. And, because it's so precise, macOS wouldn't require the kind of finger-friendly overhaul it would to support direct touch.

It wouldn't let you do all the gestures, the swipes, the pinches, the pokes, but it would let you do everything you can do now. Just with Pencil.

And, if Apple did both, gesture support for fingers and Pencil support for pressure and precision, that could lead to some pretty amazing computing experiences from MacBook to iMac.

I mean, at least until the fully multitouch, ARM-based iOS clamshells and all-in-ones appear, right?

Will the Mac ever go multitouch?

That's the amazing thing about the future. It's filled with limitless potential and possibilities. And if you want to be part of it, but don't know where to start, check out Brilliant. It's a great place to start learning the logic and theory behind coding, algorithms, artificial intelligence, and more. Each course is interactive and breaks up complicated concepts into bite-sized chunks to make sure you actually absorb the information, a strategy which I really wish was used by traditional schools.

So hit up brilliant.org/vector and get started today. Thanks brilliant and thanks to all of you for supporting the show.

It could be like netbooks, where Apple ignores the trend, then releases new products like the MacBook Air and iPad that become the trendsetters. But it's hard to see touch going the way of cheap, cramped, computing experiences, and the trends have already been set here. iPads helped set them.

Any year now, Apple could surprise all of us at WWDC and tell us macOS has been living a double life as a fully multitouch operating system for a year or more already and if finally ready to go public. Or that iOS has gotten full mouse and trackpad support and is all dressed up in fancy new clamshell and all-in-one clothes. Or that its new reality OS is a titanic new reality and everything we've worried about in terms of Macs and multitouch was a colossal waste of time in the new, next generation world.

]]>

It's 2018. Why don't we have multitouch screen Macs?

The company line is that it's not ergonomic — that having to reach up and across to touch the screen of a Mac to get things done isn't only inefficient but potentially injurious to humans. It's not about having to, though. It's about being able to. Adding multitouch to the Mac doesn't remove the existing keyboard or mouse controls any more than making the Smart Keyboard for iPad Pro removed the taps and swipes.

What Apple keeps saying about touchscreen Macs

There have been 3rd party attempts to make Macs if not multitouch than at least basically touch over the years, including the ModBook, which tore the notebook down and rebuilt it with a digitizer, and various touch-detection overlays for Macs used as kiosks in the hospitality industries. But there's been nothing from Apple. Nothing and more nothing.

Lke I mentioned in the ARM MacBook video, link in the description, Apple is a multibillion dollar company — billion as is money in the bank, not trillion as in market cap, commentor friends! — and can afford to explore, prototype, test, and tweak any and everything bloggers, social media types, and YouTubers can imagine, and often years before we imagine them.

In the case of the multitouch Mac, the company has said just as much over the years.

I think anything can be forced to converge, but the problem is that products are about tradeoffs, and you begin to make tradeoffs to the point where what you have left at the end of the day doesn't please anyone. You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator but y'know, those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user.

From the ergonomic standpoint we have studied this pretty extensively and we believe that on a desktop scenario where you have a fixed keyboard, having to reach up to do touch interfaces is uncomfortable," says Schiller. "iOS from its start has been designed as a multi-touch experience — you don't have the things you have in a mouse-driven interface, like a cursor to move around, or teeny little 'close' boxes that you can't hit with your finger. The Mac OS has been designed from day one for an indirect pointing mechanism. These two worlds are different on purpose, and that's a good thing — we can optimize around the best experience for each and not try to mesh them together into a least-common-denominator experience."

Steven Levy, speaking again with Phil Schiller, this time for Wired in 2016 following the release of the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar instead of a touch screen:

"We think of the whole platform," he says. "If we were to do Multi-Touch on the screen of the notebook, that wouldn't be enough — then the desktop wouldn't work that way." And touch on the desktop, he says, would be a disaster. "Can you imagine a 27-inch iMac where you have to reach over the air to try to touch and do things? That becomes absurd." He also explains that such a move would mean totally redesigning the menu bar for fingers, in a way that would ruin the experience for those using pointer devices like the touch or mouse. "You can't optimize for both," he says. "It's the lowest common denominator thinking."

Apple came to this conclusion by testing if touch screens made sense on the Mac. "Our instincts were that it didn't, but, what the heck, we could be wrong—so our teams worked on that for a number of times over the years," says Schiller. "We've absolutely come away with the belief that it isn't the right thing to do. Our instincts were correct."

Shara Tibken and Connie Guglielmo, speaking with Apple's Chief Creative Office, Jony Ive for CNet at the same time:

It's not because Apple can't make a touchscreen Mac. It's because Apple decided a touchscreen on a Mac wasn't "particularly useful," says Ive. And on the MacBook Pro, which keeps getting thinner and lighter, it could be "a burden."

And with Phil Schiller:

Apple says it doesn't have a problem with the Mac and iPad overlapping, since each approaches tasks in a different way. They won't remove the iconic menu bar from the Mac desktop, for instance, just as they'd never add it to the iPad. "It is great to provide two different ways to solve some of the same things, but they also do very unique things that the other doesn't," Schiller says. "Having them separate allows us to explore both, versus trying to force them into one — and only one — model."

Jon Packowski, writing for Buzzfeed following Apple's new Mac Pro tease in April of 2017:

"No," Schiller said when asked if Apple would consider building such a thing. "Touch doesn't even register on the list of things pro users are interested in talking about. They're interested in things like performance and storage and expandability."

Lauren Goode, speaking with Apple's senior Vice President of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, for Wired in June of 2018, following the announcement of macOS Mojave and UIKit apps for Mac:

When addressing my question about whether iOS apps moving to MacOS is a natural precursor to touchscreen Macs, Federighi told me he's "not into touchscreens" on PCs and doesn't anticipate he ever will be. "We really feel that the ergonomics of using a Mac are that your hands are rested on a surface, and that lifting your arm up to poke a screen is a pretty fatiguing thing to do," he said.

Federighi added that he doesn't think the touchscreen laptops out there today—which he referred to as "experiments"—have been compelling. "I don't think we've looked at any of the other guys to date and said, how fast can we get there?"

So, on one hand, when Apple executives say they don't like multitouch Macs, because gorilla arms, it's because they're some of the very few people in the world who've actually used multitouch Macs in the lab. It's not an idea or an abstract to them. It's one of the thousand things they said no to before saying yes to the iPad Pro.

On the other hand, you have touch screen laptops, or laptop-like products from Microsoft, Google, and others that get a lot of attention from tech media and creative pros alike.

But Apple executives are talking about the Mac as it is, with an interface that goes back to the Xerox Park days, to the NeXT days, to the foundations idealized around a mouse an pointer, with tiny touch targets never meant for direct finger manipulation.

The challenge of the touch screen Mac

To bring multitouch to the Mac, Apple would have to redesign macOS and its interface to make fingers a first class citizen when it comes to experience and interaction.

The first problem there is the assertion that making things like the Mac menubar more touch-friendly would force them to be less mouse and pointer friendly. The second is, even if you don't believe a compromise could be reached, the second problem is the time and resources it would take to reach it.

It took Microsoft years to make Windows touch friendly, never mind touch first or even touch equal. Literally years in the desert, through Windows 8, to get to Windows 10. But they had to do it. They absolutely had to. Windows Mobile, Microsoft's original touch-ish-based operating system for mobile, didn't survive content with iOS and absolutely not with Android. Despite frequent reboots and compatibility breaks, through Windows Mobile 6.5, Windows Phone 7 and 8, it just hit a brick wall on phones and was never given a chance on tablets. It inspired a lot of the later, more digitally authentic design of iOS and Android, but it itself never succeeded in the market. So, Microsoft absolutely had to make traditional Windows go touch.

Google, by contrast, is a far younger company and never had a traditional computer business or operating system to worry about. It could buy Android, start work on a BlackBerry-style device, see the iPhone, pivot hard into multitouch, and go all-in from pretty much the start. It could also take Apple's WebKit, make Chrome, fork WebKit, make Blink, and basically make the browser the operating system for a large swath of the increasingly web-based world. And multitouch web browsers have been a thing since Safari on the original iPhone.

Apple has a successful traditional computer business with the Mac and a successful multitouch-first mobile business with iOS. It could abandon the former and go all-in on the latter — some analysts , in the name of focus, repeatedly call on Apple to do just that — but there's no existential threat forcing Apple to do that just to survive the great interface transition of the last decade. It's already survived just fine.

Creative pros, at least some of them, are looking at products like the SurfaceBook and Surface Studio with lust in their hearts. They may be niche, something that Microsoft's modular model makes easier because so many other vendors can fill the mainstream, where only Apple makes the Mac. That can still accrue mindshare, but maybe not enough to compel Apple to act.

Likewise, the first generation of kids raised on iPad are growing up. They're not touch-immigrants like us traditional computer user folks. They're touch-native. They expect screens to be like iPhones and iPads. They expect them to respond to touch. And when they don't, there's no consideration given to ergonomics or history — they simply think the screen is broken.

Apple no doubt believe anyone trying touch will rapidly discover it doesn't work on the Mac, compartmentalize the same way they do basketball from soccer rules when it comes to hands and feet on a ball, and just get on with using both the way nature and Apple intended.

But what if they don't? Nobody wants touch on a Mac. Once upon a time, Steve Jobs said nobody wanted video on an iPod. Then we got video iPods. Nobody reads books. Then we got iBooks. If you see a stylus you blew it. Now we have Apple Pencil. Like I said in the MacBook Arm video, for Apple, nothing unannounced exists. And nothing Apple hasn't done is worth doing. Until it is.

The potential solutions to the touch screen Mac

So, lets say regardless of what the Mac market was or is, the Mac market becomes a multitouch market. How could Apple address that?

The iOS Mac

The easiest answer, of course, is to just run iOS on Mac-like hardware. At least at the lower-end. An iOS MacBook is something that, according to rumors, has been in the labs for years. An iOS Mac mini isn't hard to imagine either, especially with Apple getting back into the display business. If Apple does what it previously did, and makes an iMac and stand-alone version of the same display, it could field a really interesting range of multitouch non-Macs that would appeal to iPad Pro users and even those with Surface envy but who also want and value more traditional clamshell, box, and all-in-one form factors. That includes people who find traditional computers off-putting, but also creatives who find multitouch increasingly essential.

And having iOS on the mobile and entry-level end and macOS on high end, each with its own functionality, wouldn't be any more confusing than having iOS on an iPad Pro and macOS on an iMac.

Some people might want real macOS on real multitouch, especially if they want to go from the terminal to the finger and back, but the vast majority of people now and certainly going forward probably really don't. And as iOS gets more and more capable, pushed by the iPad Pro, that'll become more and more true.

And that's another easy answer — as iPad Pro becomes more mature, rather than being the touch screen Mac, it can become the thing that legitimately eliminates the need for a touch screen Mac.

iOS on Mac

A dual-booting device, one that could run iOS in tablet mode and macOS in notebook mode would no doubt be compelling to some. Though the complexity of that idea probably punches every toaster/fridge alarm in Apple's park.

Likewise a MacBook that still doesn't have touch on the screen but has even more touch than the current bar: The entire keyboard gone virtual. What's essentially a macOS display standing up and what's essentially an iPad display — one that can become a full-on Taptic keyboard or any control surface you need any time you need it. One that uses proprioceptive lies to fool your fingers and brains into thinking its real the way the force touch trackpad does today. That's sci-fi that's always getting closer to being sci-fact, but is also probably something traditional Mac users would hate even more than butterfly and dome switches.

So…

The Multitouch Mac

The harder answer is to start adding multitouch to macOS. Harder not just because it would require solving interface problems like the Mac menubar for multitouch, but because of the resources it would take to solve it. Yes, even Apple, with billions of dollars in the bank and a market caps that flirts at a trillion dollars simply can't do everything it wants, not all at once.

The constraint here is engineers. Apple needs engineers and designers to come up with, implement, test, and deploy all the new code and all the new paradigms that would make multitouch Macs a great product. There aren't that many top-flight engineers to begin with. Of the ones that are, not all of them want to work in Cupertino, California, or for Apple instead of a company or startup with greater stock option growth or IPO potential. And competition for the ones who do want to work for bigger companies in the valley, between Apple, Google, and Facebook, is fierce. Even when Apple is the first choice for those engineers, working on macOS may not be. Not when some see it as the past and the upcoming reality OS and autonomous technologies projects as the future.

Even though Apple has some of the best engineers in the world, it doesn't have all of them, and putting the ones it does have on retrofitting multitouch to macOS means those same engineers can't work on other projects, including the next versions of iOS, and the special projects that come after that. Which is a huge opportunity cost.

Just like having those engineers work on performance last year for iOS 12 meant new features, like the rumored new springboard, got pushed to next year.

It's easy for me or anyone in tech media to say "just add touchscreen to the Mac" like all Apple has to do is buy a touch layer and slip it under the glass. But, we don't have to design and engineer the staggering amount of work that would actually have to go into making it all work.

Apple could absolutely do it, but even if Apple could do it much, much faster than Microsoft with Windows 8 and 10, would it be worth losing a year on iOS, two years? While Google is plowing ahead with Android and its next-generation underpinnings, Fuchsia?

The MacBook Beyond

That brings us to an even harder answer, if briefly, because I intend to go deeper into it in a future video: Apple's own next-generation operating system. There have been rumors of rOS, the reality operating system that may one day power Apple Glasses and other products to follow. There have also been rumors of a TitanOS that'll power Apple's autonomous future. Though some of the grandeur aspirations behind that no doubt changed when Apple refocused the project a couple of years ago.

There's a future where iOS and/or macOS simply keep evolving, having old modules like HFS+ swapped out for new ones like APFS, having daemons re-written, frameworks improved, and otherwise, year after year, step by step, becoming what's next.

There's also a future where, rather than merge macOS and iOS or replace macOS with iOS, but replace both with something new. A next NeXT, so to speak. That would be an incalculable amount of work, way more than retrofitting multitouch onto the Mac or adding full keyboard and trackpad support to iOS, but it would also leave Apple with something far more interesting: A new stack, from kernel to interface, that is completely modern and input agnostic. Something that provides local authentication, cloud connection, and simply understands whatever input methods are available to it, from keyboard, to mouse, to multitouch, to the AI and AR future we're racing towards. But, again, more on that soonish…

macOS Touch

Apple could make the Mac a little bit multitouch. Again, I realize it's way easier to say something like that than to be the person in charge of implementing it, but here's the thought:

Give Macs a touch screen that enables gesture navigation. Basically, the same level of functionality the gestures on a Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad currently allow, and let them poke, swipe, and pinch the screen, if and when they really want to.

Flick up a page in Safari. Zoom into a map. Tap to pause or play a movie. That sort of thing.

Now, that could be a complete mess. If the Mac supports some gestures, people could easily expect it to support complete, full-on multitouch, and when they find out it doesn't it could seem just as broken as no touch at all.

But it's also possible people are smart and will adapt to the constraints and find it to be exactly what they need.

The Mac Pencil

Another option is adding Apple Pencil support to macOS. The Pencil is as precise an input tool as the mouse or trackpad, and could bring all the great pressure sensitive features from iPad Pro roaring onto the Mac. And, because it's so precise, macOS wouldn't require the kind of finger-friendly overhaul it would to support direct touch.

It wouldn't let you do all the gestures, the swipes, the pinches, the pokes, but it would let you do everything you can do now. Just with Pencil.

And, if Apple did both, gesture support for fingers and Pencil support for pressure and precision, that could lead to some pretty amazing computing experiences from MacBook to iMac.

I mean, at least until the fully multitouch, ARM-based iOS clamshells and all-in-ones appear, right?

Will the Mac ever go multitouch?

That's the amazing thing about the future. It's filled with limitless potential and possibilities. And if you want to be part of it, but don't know where to start, check out Brilliant. It's a great place to start learning the logic and theory behind coding, algorithms, artificial intelligence, and more. Each course is interactive and breaks up complicated concepts into bite-sized chunks to make sure you actually absorb the information, a strategy which I really wish was used by traditional schools.

So hit up brilliant.org/vector and get started today. Thanks brilliant and thanks to all of you for supporting the show.

It could be like netbooks, where Apple ignores the trend, then releases new products like the MacBook Air and iPad that become the trendsetters. But it's hard to see touch going the way of cheap, cramped, computing experiences, and the trends have already been set here. iPads helped set them.

Any year now, Apple could surprise all of us at WWDC and tell us macOS has been living a double life as a fully multitouch operating system for a year or more already and if finally ready to go public. Or that iOS has gotten full mouse and trackpad support and is all dressed up in fancy new clamshell and all-in-one clothes. Or that its new reality OS is a titanic new reality and everything we've worried about in terms of Macs and multitouch was a colossal waste of time in the new, next generation world.

Whether you're using an iPhone on the go or an iPad Pro to get your very real work… or play… done, the more efficient you can be, the better. Including typing. Especially typing.

Following the launch of the latest iPad Pro, even basic typing tricks like trackpad mode and cursor movement spread through social with viral shock and delight. Years old, many people still simply didn't know.

Trackpad Mode

I usually try to do these things in order, but this one got so much attention lately I'm going to front load so you get it first. If you're using the virtual keyboard you can quickly switch it to a virtual trackpad, which makes precisely placing the cursor for precision edits much, much easier.

Touch and hold the Space Bar.

Swipe your finger over the trackpad to move the cursor.

On a 3D Touch iPhone, you can also press firmly to switch to trackpad mode, and press again to switch between moving the cursor and text selection.

On an iPad, you can just use two fingers directly on the text to move the cursor, and double tap to switch to text selection.

It's so good it kinda makes you wish external keyboards had a way to support it. And on more than just text…

Set settings

There are a lot of settings you can toggle for the keyboard, including auto-caps, auto-corrections, spell-check, caps lock, predictions, and more.

Launch Settings.

Tap on General.

Tap on Keyboard.

Toggle until you're happy.

For most people, most of the time, the defaults are not only fine. But, if they're not for you, at least not right now, fix them up just the way you like them before we go on.

Speed caps (and numbers and symbols)

If you only want to enter one number or symbol, don't tap Number or Symbol button — there's a faster way!

Touch the number or symbol button and keep your finger on it.

Slide your finger up to the number or symbol you want to enter.

Let go!

Once you're done, the keyboard will instantly switch back to text more. The same works for shift when you want to enter uppercase letters!

CAPS LOCK

When you want to SHOUT AT SOMEONE WHO IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET you don't need to hit the Shift button for each letter.

Tap the shift quick twice in a row.

Type your TEXT.

Tap shift again to go back to lower case.

YOU'RE WELCOME.

Special characters

Typing the letter 'e' is easy as tapping it. Typing 'èéêëēėę' is almost as easy.

Touch and hold down on the letter to get a popup with alternate characters.

Slide over to the alternate character you want enter.

Let go.

On 3D Touch iPhones, you even get this really cool Taptic feedback for each character… which kinda feels like it should be an option, like keyboard sound, for every key by now.

Keyboard shortcuts

If you have an external keyboard connected to your iPad, you get all sorts of useful keyboard shortcuts along with it.

That includes classics like command C command C to copy and Command V to paste, even command Tab to switch between recent apps, and command space for Spotlight. But you also get some special ones, like command H to return to the Home screen.

Just hold down the command key to bring up a list of useful commands for any app, or area of the system, you're in.

Shake to undo (iPhone only)

If you type some text, delete some text, or even paste some text and later regret, you can undo it.

Shake your iPhone.

Tap Undo (or Redo).

Yeah… it's… weird. But it works. What works even better is a dedicated Undo key, which only the Plus size — but strangely not the Max size — iPhones have and only in landscape.

It'd be great to see that everywhere.

One handed mode

If you're a walk and typer with your iPhone, coffee in one hand, texting in the other, or if you just prefer typing one handed, you can offset the keyboard right or left to make it easier.

Tap and hold the Globe button.

Tap the left or right biased keyboard button.

Type away, and when and if you want to go back, just hit the big arrow on the other side.

Split Keyboard

On smaller iPads, basically 10.5 and under, you can undock and move the keyboard, and split it left and right for easier thumb typing.

Touch and hold the keyboard button, bottom right.

Tap Undock to release or Split to separate.

You can redock and merge at any point by doing the same thing. And, yeah, Apple seems to think the new 11-inch and all 12.9 inch iPads are too big for this feature, but almost anyone who knows about it and tries it just thinks it's broken and that might not be the better solution.

Dictation

As improved as the iPhone and iPad keyboards are, sometimes it's still easier to talk than type. Dictation has gotten better over the years, including streaming transcriptions, and offline speech-to-text. Just…

Tap the mic button

Start talking.

You can even say punctuation, "new line", "new paragraph", and even "all caps". If you need to be totally hands free, you can tell Siri to send a new message or email, or even take a note, and then just start dictating.

Sadly, there's still no emoji support, just smiley and frowney emoticons.

Fast formatting

You can quickly apply bold, italics, underline, or strike-through in any app that supports rich text formatting.

Select the text you want to format.

Tap the B/U option in the popup menu.

Choose the formatting you want to apply.

You can also change the indent level or, in mail, the quote level in replies.

Attachment insertion

If your typing an email and decide you want to attach a photo, video, or file, you don't have to destroy the email, go find the file, and start all over. You can attach from right inside the existing email.

Tap where you want to insert the image or attachment.

Tap Insert Photo or Attachment from the popup menu.

Choose the photo or attachment you want to insert.

Look Up

If you're not sure whether you're using the right word — cite the site in sight? — you can pull up a dictionary and check.

Double tap to select the word you want to look up.

Tap Look Up to get the dictionary definition, wikipedia entry, and often related news and even media related to that word.

iOS can actually support multiple dictionaries as well, so you can go to Settings, General, Dictionary and check out the list.

Super shortcuts

If you tap the spacebar twice while typing, iOS will automatically insert a '.' for you and capitalizes the next letter. That's a great time-saver, but what's even better is that you can set up your own.

Launch Settings.

Tap on General

Tap on Keyboard.

Tap on Shortcuts.

It's great for handling common misspellings or inserting anything your type frequently, like 'gml' for your gmail address. Or… sshrug for ¯_(ツ)_/°¯

Keyboard apps

If you don't like the built-in QuickType keyboard, you can get alternate typing methods like SwiftKey or T9, productivity boosters like Grammarly, and even fun stuff like Bitmoji.

Launch App Store.

Find the keyboard you want and download it.

Launch Settings.

Tap on General.

Tap on Keyboards.

Tap on New Keyboard.

Choose the keyboard you downloaded.

Third party keyboards are still a little kludgy on iOS, even if they have gotten better over the years. And, yeah… so much bitmoji.

Swift switching

Once you've got a few keyboards installed, paging between them becomes arduous. Instead:

Touch and hold the Globe/Smily button until the keyboard selector pops up.

Slide up to the keyboard you want to switch to.

Let go.

QuickType… and untype

Pop quiz, did you know the same person who ran Internet Explorer for Microsoft also invented auto complete and auto correct?

Apple's version of AutoCorrect is now part of the QuickType keyboard system, which uses machine learning not just to figure out what and how you like to type, but to crowd source popular slang and expressions so it can suggest those to you as well.

If it goes wrong, though, and corrects something you never wanted corrected, just hit the backspace key and iOS will popup what you originally typed. Tap on it, and it'll be un-auto-corrected and restored.

Whether you're using an iPhone on the go or an iPad Pro to get your very real work… or play… done, the more efficient you can be, the better. Including typing. Especially typing.

Following the launch of the latest iPad Pro, even basic typing tricks like trackpad mode and cursor movement spread through social with viral shock and delight. Years old, many people still simply didn't know.

Trackpad Mode

I usually try to do these things in order, but this one got so much attention lately I'm going to front load so you get it first. If you're using the virtual keyboard you can quickly switch it to a virtual trackpad, which makes precisely placing the cursor for precision edits much, much easier.

Touch and hold the Space Bar.

Swipe your finger over the trackpad to move the cursor.

On a 3D Touch iPhone, you can also press firmly to switch to trackpad mode, and press again to switch between moving the cursor and text selection.

On an iPad, you can just use two fingers directly on the text to move the cursor, and double tap to switch to text selection.

It's so good it kinda makes you wish external keyboards had a way to support it. And on more than just text…

Set settings

There are a lot of settings you can toggle for the keyboard, including auto-caps, auto-corrections, spell-check, caps lock, predictions, and more.

Launch Settings.

Tap on General.

Tap on Keyboard.

Toggle until you're happy.

For most people, most of the time, the defaults are not only fine. But, if they're not for you, at least not right now, fix them up just the way you like them before we go on.

Speed caps (and numbers and symbols)

If you only want to enter one number or symbol, don't tap Number or Symbol button — there's a faster way!

Touch the number or symbol button and keep your finger on it.

Slide your finger up to the number or symbol you want to enter.

Let go!

Once you're done, the keyboard will instantly switch back to text more. The same works for shift when you want to enter uppercase letters!

CAPS LOCK

When you want to SHOUT AT SOMEONE WHO IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET you don't need to hit the Shift button for each letter.

Tap the shift quick twice in a row.

Type your TEXT.

Tap shift again to go back to lower case.

YOU'RE WELCOME.

Special characters

Typing the letter 'e' is easy as tapping it. Typing 'èéêëēėę' is almost as easy.

Touch and hold down on the letter to get a popup with alternate characters.

Slide over to the alternate character you want enter.

Let go.

On 3D Touch iPhones, you even get this really cool Taptic feedback for each character… which kinda feels like it should be an option, like keyboard sound, for every key by now.

Keyboard shortcuts

If you have an external keyboard connected to your iPad, you get all sorts of useful keyboard shortcuts along with it.

That includes classics like command C command C to copy and Command V to paste, even command Tab to switch between recent apps, and command space for Spotlight. But you also get some special ones, like command H to return to the Home screen.

Just hold down the command key to bring up a list of useful commands for any app, or area of the system, you're in.

Shake to undo (iPhone only)

If you type some text, delete some text, or even paste some text and later regret, you can undo it.

Shake your iPhone.

Tap Undo (or Redo).

Yeah… it's… weird. But it works. What works even better is a dedicated Undo key, which only the Plus size — but strangely not the Max size — iPhones have and only in landscape.

It'd be great to see that everywhere.

One handed mode

If you're a walk and typer with your iPhone, coffee in one hand, texting in the other, or if you just prefer typing one handed, you can offset the keyboard right or left to make it easier.

Tap and hold the Globe button.

Tap the left or right biased keyboard button.

Type away, and when and if you want to go back, just hit the big arrow on the other side.

Split Keyboard

On smaller iPads, basically 10.5 and under, you can undock and move the keyboard, and split it left and right for easier thumb typing.

Touch and hold the keyboard button, bottom right.

Tap Undock to release or Split to separate.

You can redock and merge at any point by doing the same thing. And, yeah, Apple seems to think the new 11-inch and all 12.9 inch iPads are too big for this feature, but almost anyone who knows about it and tries it just thinks it's broken and that might not be the better solution.

Dictation

As improved as the iPhone and iPad keyboards are, sometimes it's still easier to talk than type. Dictation has gotten better over the years, including streaming transcriptions, and offline speech-to-text. Just…

Tap the mic button

Start talking.

You can even say punctuation, "new line", "new paragraph", and even "all caps". If you need to be totally hands free, you can tell Siri to send a new message or email, or even take a note, and then just start dictating.

Sadly, there's still no emoji support, just smiley and frowney emoticons.

Fast formatting

You can quickly apply bold, italics, underline, or strike-through in any app that supports rich text formatting.

Select the text you want to format.

Tap the B/U option in the popup menu.

Choose the formatting you want to apply.

You can also change the indent level or, in mail, the quote level in replies.

Attachment insertion

If your typing an email and decide you want to attach a photo, video, or file, you don't have to destroy the email, go find the file, and start all over. You can attach from right inside the existing email.

Tap where you want to insert the image or attachment.

Tap Insert Photo or Attachment from the popup menu.

Choose the photo or attachment you want to insert.

Look Up

If you're not sure whether you're using the right word — cite the site in sight? — you can pull up a dictionary and check.

Double tap to select the word you want to look up.

Tap Look Up to get the dictionary definition, wikipedia entry, and often related news and even media related to that word.

iOS can actually support multiple dictionaries as well, so you can go to Settings, General, Dictionary and check out the list.

Super shortcuts

If you tap the spacebar twice while typing, iOS will automatically insert a '.' for you and capitalizes the next letter. That's a great time-saver, but what's even better is that you can set up your own.

Launch Settings.

Tap on General

Tap on Keyboard.

Tap on Shortcuts.

It's great for handling common misspellings or inserting anything your type frequently, like 'gml' for your gmail address. Or… sshrug for ¯_(ツ)_/°¯

Keyboard apps

If you don't like the built-in QuickType keyboard, you can get alternate typing methods like SwiftKey or T9, productivity boosters like Grammarly, and even fun stuff like Bitmoji.

Launch App Store.

Find the keyboard you want and download it.

Launch Settings.

Tap on General.

Tap on Keyboards.

Tap on New Keyboard.

Choose the keyboard you downloaded.

Third party keyboards are still a little kludgy on iOS, even if they have gotten better over the years. And, yeah… so much bitmoji.

Swift switching

Once you've got a few keyboards installed, paging between them becomes arduous. Instead:

Touch and hold the Globe/Smily button until the keyboard selector pops up.

Slide up to the keyboard you want to switch to.

Let go.

QuickType… and untype

Pop quiz, did you know the same person who ran Internet Explorer for Microsoft also invented auto complete and auto correct?

Apple's version of AutoCorrect is now part of the QuickType keyboard system, which uses machine learning not just to figure out what and how you like to type, but to crowd source popular slang and expressions so it can suggest those to you as well.

If it goes wrong, though, and corrects something you never wanted corrected, just hit the backspace key and iOS will popup what you originally typed. Tap on it, and it'll be un-auto-corrected and restored.

What if, instead of just a box, Apple also made an Apple TV streaming stick?

Currently, Apple's only answer to television is a starting at $179 box that runs apps and plays up to 4K HDR. But what if there was something else? Something smaller that, instead of sitting beside any tv, could plug right into the back. Something that gave you all the power of Apple's TV app, but could go with you in a pocket… or maybe was already in your pocket or bag?

I've been thinking about this for the last couple years but now it looks like the next couple of years could make it a reality.

Aaron Tilley and Jessica Toonkel, writing for The Information just yesterday:

To get more viewers for its upcoming TV streaming service, Apple has contemplated going downmarket on its TV hardware.

The tech giant has had internal discussions about introducing a low-priced streaming "dongle" that people could plug into the back of their TV sets, similar to Amazon's Fire Stick or Google's Chromecast, people familiar with the project said. The dongle could make Apple's upcoming video streaming service—which will only be available on Apple devices such as the Apple TV, iPhones and iPads—more widely available. The service will be rolled out globally next year. Shows made originally for Apple will be free on the service.

Making an Apple TV to GO:

The gist was and remains this: It's hard not to look at the Google Chromecast and wonder if Apple could make something like it. Don't get me wrong: I love the Apple TV. 4K HDR and all the music, tv, movies, and everything else at the sound of Siri or click of a controller, it's exactly what I want in my house today. But it's not something I can easily put in my pocket and travel with — be it between cities or simply between friends.

In the decade or so since we've gone from the Palm Tree 680 to the iPhone X, the local cable company really isn't providing a better box, and certainly not a better interface than it did back in the day of CRTs. Literally all the innovation in the industry is happening from the outside. From the likes of TiVo, Roku, and yes, Amazon, Google, and Apple.

But Apple is, again, currently bound to that box. And that means, unless you put the current box in every room in your house and office, and take one with you everywhere you travel, you may very well be stuck with those old, outdated interfaces. Or many interfaces.

One of the best things about CarPlay, Apple's automotive infotainment system, is that it lets your device and content take over the interface of any car that supports it — and eliminates the confusion historically associated with everything from upgrades to rentals. AirPlay does something similar for any television. But it needs that Apple TV box to do it.

What if it didn't? What if, like Google's Chromecast or Amazon's Fire dongle — tiny devices that plugs into any HDTV with HDMI, and lets you stream any of your content, and much of the internet's content, through them, Apple had an Apple TV Go, or Express, or mini, or whatever, that would do exactly the same. But with all your Apple content along with the rest of the internet stuff.

The Apple TV Streaming Stick

The easy way to do it would be to make it a dumb dongle. A small, presumably cheap piece of hardware that connects over AirPlay and lets you stream anything your iPhone, iPad, or Mac is capable of streaming right to your TV.

The interface would stay on your iOS or macOS device, but all the content would push over point-to-point Wi-Fi, through the dongle, and show up on the big screen.

The only downside is that, like with anything AirPlay, it requires a persistent connection to your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, and that limits what else you can do while you're AirPlaying.

The Apple TV mini

A more sophisticated way to do it would be to embed the Apple TV interface on the dongle. It would be a more expensive solution, even with only enough local storage to allow streaming, not local content, but to buffer those streams to ensure steady, stable playback. But it would also be far more independent.

Apple has shown that it can make incredibly small, incredibly dense computational objects — there's that term again — with AirPods and Apple Pencil, so making an incredibly small, incredibly capable streaming stick is certainly in its core competences.

And a hybrid approach, something that streams content directly from the internet but also lets you stream content from your iPhone, iPad, and Mac, including games that let you use your iPhone or iPad as a controller, could be incredibly compelling.

Even if expensive by current streaming stick standards — currently dongles retail for between 25 and 50 dollars — it could be cheap enough by Apple standards to substantially increase living room and every room penetration.

Which would be great, considering Apple has billions of dollars in television content coming next year.

Sure, a billion iOS devices with TV.app is certainly a big enough market to support it — or, rather, Apple Television as a value add is certainly a good way to support a billion iOS devices and more to come.

But it could add even more value for that combination. Maybe enough to get people who don't have an iOS device but have a really high affinity for Jennifer Aniston, J.J. Abrams, Oprah, or any of the other talent Apple has signed, to try it out. To be a next generation halo device, not for the pocket but for the living room.

What if, instead of just a box, Apple also made an Apple TV streaming stick?

Currently, Apple's only answer to television is a starting at $179 box that runs apps and plays up to 4K HDR. But what if there was something else? Something smaller that, instead of sitting beside any tv, could plug right into the back. Something that gave you all the power of Apple's TV app, but could go with you in a pocket… or maybe was already in your pocket or bag?

I've been thinking about this for the last couple years but now it looks like the next couple of years could make it a reality.

Aaron Tilley and Jessica Toonkel, writing for The Information just yesterday:

To get more viewers for its upcoming TV streaming service, Apple has contemplated going downmarket on its TV hardware.

The tech giant has had internal discussions about introducing a low-priced streaming "dongle" that people could plug into the back of their TV sets, similar to Amazon's Fire Stick or Google's Chromecast, people familiar with the project said. The dongle could make Apple's upcoming video streaming service—which will only be available on Apple devices such as the Apple TV, iPhones and iPads—more widely available. The service will be rolled out globally next year. Shows made originally for Apple will be free on the service.

Making an Apple TV to GO:

The gist was and remains this: It's hard not to look at the Google Chromecast and wonder if Apple could make something like it. Don't get me wrong: I love the Apple TV. 4K HDR and all the music, tv, movies, and everything else at the sound of Siri or click of a controller, it's exactly what I want in my house today. But it's not something I can easily put in my pocket and travel with — be it between cities or simply between friends.

In the decade or so since we've gone from the Palm Tree 680 to the iPhone X, the local cable company really isn't providing a better box, and certainly not a better interface than it did back in the day of CRTs. Literally all the innovation in the industry is happening from the outside. From the likes of TiVo, Roku, and yes, Amazon, Google, and Apple.

But Apple is, again, currently bound to that box. And that means, unless you put the current box in every room in your house and office, and take one with you everywhere you travel, you may very well be stuck with those old, outdated interfaces. Or many interfaces.

One of the best things about CarPlay, Apple's automotive infotainment system, is that it lets your device and content take over the interface of any car that supports it — and eliminates the confusion historically associated with everything from upgrades to rentals. AirPlay does something similar for any television. But it needs that Apple TV box to do it.

What if it didn't? What if, like Google's Chromecast or Amazon's Fire dongle — tiny devices that plugs into any HDTV with HDMI, and lets you stream any of your content, and much of the internet's content, through them, Apple had an Apple TV Go, or Express, or mini, or whatever, that would do exactly the same. But with all your Apple content along with the rest of the internet stuff.

The Apple TV Streaming Stick

The easy way to do it would be to make it a dumb dongle. A small, presumably cheap piece of hardware that connects over AirPlay and lets you stream anything your iPhone, iPad, or Mac is capable of streaming right to your TV.

The interface would stay on your iOS or macOS device, but all the content would push over point-to-point Wi-Fi, through the dongle, and show up on the big screen.

The only downside is that, like with anything AirPlay, it requires a persistent connection to your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, and that limits what else you can do while you're AirPlaying.

The Apple TV mini

A more sophisticated way to do it would be to embed the Apple TV interface on the dongle. It would be a more expensive solution, even with only enough local storage to allow streaming, not local content, but to buffer those streams to ensure steady, stable playback. But it would also be far more independent.

Apple has shown that it can make incredibly small, incredibly dense computational objects — there's that term again — with AirPods and Apple Pencil, so making an incredibly small, incredibly capable streaming stick is certainly in its core competences.

And a hybrid approach, something that streams content directly from the internet but also lets you stream content from your iPhone, iPad, and Mac, including games that let you use your iPhone or iPad as a controller, could be incredibly compelling.

Even if expensive by current streaming stick standards — currently dongles retail for between 25 and 50 dollars — it could be cheap enough by Apple standards to substantially increase living room and every room penetration.

Which would be great, considering Apple has billions of dollars in television content coming next year.

Sure, a billion iOS devices with TV.app is certainly a big enough market to support it — or, rather, Apple Television as a value add is certainly a good way to support a billion iOS devices and more to come.

But it could add even more value for that combination. Maybe enough to get people who don't have an iOS device but have a really high affinity for Jennifer Aniston, J.J. Abrams, Oprah, or any of the other talent Apple has signed, to try it out. To be a next generation halo device, not for the pocket but for the living room.

For a while, Wikipedia was serving a penis instead of the president. Apple switched away from it quick, but what happens next time?

For the last little while, maybe minutes, maybe hours, pranksters at Wikipedia have been battling to replace the image of U.S. President Donald Trump with an image of a penis. Wikipedia has been rolling back the change but they keep finding new ways to push it through again.

That affects Apple because Siri pulls the Wikipedia entry to answer questions like "Who is Donald Trump?" and "How old is Donald Trump?" Which means, you guessed it, for the last little while, off and on, Siri has been serving up the penis image instead of the president one.

Update: The following information was sent in by English Wikipedia administrator TheSandDoctor:

It was switching back and forth since Siri sources its information from Wikipedia in (from what I gather by yesterday's events) real time and there was an active edit war regarding the vandalism. 3 accounts (since blocked) were actively adding it while others were reverting it back to his proper image. You can see the conflict back and forth, which lasted around 2 hours and 5 minutes, here https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Donald_Trump&action=history. The reason that the reverted diffs have a line through them and are greyed out is due to the fact that the revisions were hidden from public view by an administrator (not me, I found this afterwords) as being purely disruptive in the current context.

The accounts which were committing the acts of vandalism were (in order): GrantyO, Radomil, Frankie0607. The latter two were globally locked by stewards as being compromised in addition to being blocked, meaning that they cannot even log in now. As another temporary preventative measure against more vandalism by compromised accounts, the article was fully protected, which means that only admins can edit it, until November 24th (UTC). If vandalism resumes, the article will most likely be reprotected for a longer duration

In response, Apple has switched Siri to sending people to the web, aka Google, for the answer instead of Wikipedia. So, quick and smart solution there, Apple. Especially with all the corporate offices in the U.S. closed for Thanksgiving this week.

But, it does raise an important question: With open information databases being the source for assistant based replies, for Siri and others, how will Apple and other companies handle pranks and just downright inaccurate data going forward? Applepedia, Wolfram Amazon, and WikiGoogle probably aren't realistic answers.

So, is it just flagging and fixing when problems arise, at least for the foreseeable future?

For a while, Wikipedia was serving a penis instead of the president. Apple switched away from it quick, but what happens next time?

For the last little while, maybe minutes, maybe hours, pranksters at Wikipedia have been battling to replace the image of U.S. President Donald Trump with an image of a penis. Wikipedia has been rolling back the change but they keep finding new ways to push it through again.

That affects Apple because Siri pulls the Wikipedia entry to answer questions like "Who is Donald Trump?" and "How old is Donald Trump?" Which means, you guessed it, for the last little while, off and on, Siri has been serving up the penis image instead of the president one.

Update: The following information was sent in by English Wikipedia administrator TheSandDoctor:

It was switching back and forth since Siri sources its information from Wikipedia in (from what I gather by yesterday's events) real time and there was an active edit war regarding the vandalism. 3 accounts (since blocked) were actively adding it while others were reverting it back to his proper image. You can see the conflict back and forth, which lasted around 2 hours and 5 minutes, here https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Donald_Trump&action=history. The reason that the reverted diffs have a line through them and are greyed out is due to the fact that the revisions were hidden from public view by an administrator (not me, I found this afterwords) as being purely disruptive in the current context.

The accounts which were committing the acts of vandalism were (in order): GrantyO, Radomil, Frankie0607. The latter two were globally locked by stewards as being compromised in addition to being blocked, meaning that they cannot even log in now. As another temporary preventative measure against more vandalism by compromised accounts, the article was fully protected, which means that only admins can edit it, until November 24th (UTC). If vandalism resumes, the article will most likely be reprotected for a longer duration

In response, Apple has switched Siri to sending people to the web, aka Google, for the answer instead of Wikipedia. So, quick and smart solution there, Apple. Especially with all the corporate offices in the U.S. closed for Thanksgiving this week.

But, it does raise an important question: With open information databases being the source for assistant based replies, for Siri and others, how will Apple and other companies handle pranks and just downright inaccurate data going forward? Applepedia, Wolfram Amazon, and WikiGoogle probably aren't realistic answers.

So, is it just flagging and fixing when problems arise, at least for the foreseeable future?

Every year, Apple puts out a video for the holidays. Every year, they're beautifully designed and rendered, lit and acted, staged and scored. Some years, though, they hit the heart much harder. This is one of those years.

The animation is magnificent. The music, just perfect. Hit play and enjoy.

Have you ever made something wonderful but were too afraid to share it?

Every year, Apple puts out a video for the holidays. Every year, they're beautifully designed and rendered, lit and acted, staged and scored. Some years, though, they hit the heart much harder. This is one of those years.

The animation is magnificent. The music, just perfect. Hit play and enjoy.

Have you ever made something wonderful but were too afraid to share it?

'You can save $100 on HomePod." "Wait, what?" "And get a $300 gift card back on a brand new iPhone XS or XR." "Are you kidding me?" "iTunes Gift Cards for 20% off?" — Me living the Thrifter life.

TL;DR: Keep it locked to Thrifter.com through Black Friday and the Holiday shopping season to save big on Apple's iPhone, iPad, Mac, Watch, and all the HomeKit, HealthKit, and other accessories that go with them. And since deals will be announced and will sell out in the blink of an eye, turn on web or @thrifterdaily Twitter alerts so you get everything on time and in real time.

Why? Tis the season. No, not to be jolly. Well, yeah, to be jolly, but not just to be jolly — to give gifts, including to yourself, and save some money while doing it, even on tech, even on Apple tech, during Black Friday and into the holidays. Which, honestly, starts so early now and runs so damn long they might as well just call them the same thing. Blackvember Fest. Whatever.

In other words, the deals have already started and they're going to run to damn near the end of the year. Thrifter has a dedicated Black Friday newsletter which delivers hot tips, tricks, and deals right to your inbox to help you maximize your savings this year. Sign up for it right now, you won't regret it!

Now, it's no secret Apple gear is priced at a premium. And that can make it expensive to get what you want, especially everything you want. But, the Black Friday and Holiday Sales can give you a very real break.

So, if you've been looking to get a new iPhone or Mac or Home automation, to save some cash on games or movies or a new subscription, now's the time to do it, and all you and I need to know are the best ways to do it.

'You can save $100 on HomePod." "Wait, what?" "And get a $300 gift card back on a brand new iPhone XS or XR." "Are you kidding me?" "iTunes Gift Cards for 20% off?" — Me living the Thrifter life.

TL;DR: Keep it locked to Thrifter.com through Black Friday and the Holiday shopping season to save big on Apple's iPhone, iPad, Mac, Watch, and all the HomeKit, HealthKit, and other accessories that go with them. And since deals will be announced and will sell out in the blink of an eye, turn on web or @thrifterdaily Twitter alerts so you get everything on time and in real time.

Why? Tis the season. No, not to be jolly. Well, yeah, to be jolly, but not just to be jolly — to give gifts, including to yourself, and save some money while doing it, even on tech, even on Apple tech, during Black Friday and into the holidays. Which, honestly, starts so early now and runs so damn long they might as well just call them the same thing. Blackvember Fest. Whatever.

In other words, the deals have already started and they're going to run to damn near the end of the year. Thrifter has a dedicated Black Friday newsletter which delivers hot tips, tricks, and deals right to your inbox to help you maximize your savings this year. Sign up for it right now, you won't regret it!

Now, it's no secret Apple gear is priced at a premium. And that can make it expensive to get what you want, especially everything you want. But, the Black Friday and Holiday Sales can give you a very real break.

So, if you've been looking to get a new iPhone or Mac or Home automation, to save some cash on games or movies or a new subscription, now's the time to do it, and all you and I need to know are the best ways to do it.

Can an iPad Pro (2018) replace your laptop, and does iOS 12 do enough to make the new hardware sing?

I received a lot of great feedback on my iPad Pro review and I appreciate it very much. But I also got some criticism and I think it was fair. I didn't have as many negatives on my list as some other reviewers, but I think it's because I reviewed the new hardware and most of the negatives were directed at the not so new software. Also, I didn't address the iPad Pros ability to replace a laptop, which is something almost every other review focused on extensively.

For the software, I viewed that as a known quantity and, at 20-minutes long already, didn't want to spend even more time recapitulating what's pretty much the same story wrapped in a new, if much more powerful book. The counterargument was and is, and again I think fairly, that the new power should prompt not a recapitulation but a reexamining of the story.

As a laptop replacement, I don't really wonder about the iPad Pro that way, any more than I wonder about the MacBook Air replacing the iMac Pro. Both the iPad Pro and MacBook Air are ultra-portables, and both the MacBook Air and iMac Pro are traditional computers, but to me they remain different, if overlapping tools in the belt. The counterargument was and is, that whether or not Apple is positioning the iPad Pro as a laptop replacement, tech media certainly and some or many customers are looking at it in exactly that way.

So, after spending two weeks now with Apple's third generation iPad Pro, I decided to focus this re-review on what I missed last time: iPad Pro as laptop replacement and the iPad Pro software story. And what I think everyone is still getting wrong.

iPad Pro (2018) as a laptop replacement

I think Apple had two slides at the October event that caused a lot of confusing. The first showed iPad sales relative to laptop sales in the rest of the industry. In addition to annoying PC laptop fans no end, it also helped many reviewers justify the iPad Pro-as-laptop-replacement as their primary narrative. After all, Apple was comparing the two, right up there on stage.

My read was different. It wasn't. Oh, look at how many people are choosing iPad as their laptop! It was, oh, look at how many people are choosing iPad instead of a laptop. That difference might sound subtle but I think it's also key to understanding the market.

The second showed A12X performance as being "Faster than 92% of all portable PCs". There, I think Apple was just strutting over its platform technology teams continued crushing of mobile silicon. But, combined with early leaked Geekbench scores showing the new iPad rivaled a modern MacBook Pro in terms of performance, I think, cemented "laptop replacement" in a lot of minds.

If it's as powerful as a MacBook Pro, it should be a MacBook Pro, right?

I have to admit, I find myself thinking that way a lot. I come from a traditional computer background that's shaped a lot of my preconceptions about these types of devices should be and do, and I have a very hard time looking beyond my own wants and needs and understanding that I'm not the market any more. In fact, traditional computer types like me are an increasingly small part of the market.

Hence that graph. And hence the iPad.

When Steve Jobs introduced it, from the very moment he introduced it, he went out of his way to clearly say and show that the iPad wasn't meant to be a laptop, let alone a laptop replacement. Yes, even though Apple had a keyboard dock for it on day one, it was meant to be a third category that fit between a smartphone and the Mac.

Now, that was fine for the iPad nothing, but iPad Pro is for pros, right? It has the word right in the name. Surely that's meant to be a laptop replacement?

It's super tempting to think that way, but it also seems limited. Is the MacBook Pro an iMac Pro replacement? For more people than the MacBook Air, I bet, but certainly not everyone. Nor is it meant to be. It's meant to be an alternative for those willing to trade some power for portability, or an addition for people who need maximum power at the desk but also as much power as possible on the go.

Is the 12-inch MacBook an iPad Pro replacement? Probably, for people who want something ultra-light that can run macOS down to it's UNIX terminal. For those who want an incredibly powerful tablet for illustration, drafting, modeling, and more? Not so much.

But they're not pros, is something really easy to say. It's like upstate New York. Anyone who lives even a town to the north is upstate. Anyone who doesn't do exactly what I do or something that fits in a traditional box isn't a pro. So they run a website and produce some of the best automation work and content on the planet. They use an iPad Pro as their primary computer. Must not really be such a Pro…

Yet, if Apple has had one core mission since inception it's been to relentlessly, continuously, democratize technology. To make it more accessible to more people. Not just to cater to existing pros but to help make new kinds and generations of pros. Not to serve only the needs of power users but to empower every user.

I can't tell you how many people I know — how many professionals in all walks of life — who have always found traditional computers to be intimidating and unapproachable. How many legit geniuses have been made to feel dumb and less than because their brains just didn't fit a file system or their fingers, a mouse.

When you look at that graph again, sure, there are some traditional computing types buying some of those iPads instead of a laptop. But there are countless more buying those iPads because they're not laptops.

Even iPad Pro with all the power of A12X, and they're using it to draw storyboards for major studio productions, swipe through medical scans, receive, mark up, and resend documents and comps, crush photos, djay clubs, take clients through and tweak architectural models, and do a ton of real pro work, every damn day.

And they'll be able to keep doing it for years to come because A12X can not only handle augmented reality, machine learning, computational photography, and other heavy workloads today, it has enough headroom to handle iOS 13, 14, 15, and likely many more workloads to come.

If those workloads are different from a journalists or a developers or, yeah, me, so be it. They're still every bit as important. If a laptop is better for you, great, you have plenty of those to choose from. If an iPad Pro is better for you, well it's the first thing that really is so everyone else can just back up off. Because it's not just about us. It's about all of us.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say if Apple didn't consider it exactly that way, the company wouldn't have introduced the new iPad Pro at the exact same event where, just minutes before, it introduced the new MacBook Air. An iPad Pro and a laptop, not an iPad Pro instead of a laptop.

iPad Pro 2018 and the iOS story

All that said, whether or not you or I or anyone thinks the iPad Pro should be a laptop replacement or not, there are undeniably areas where the iPad Pro still isn't all the iPad Pro it could be. Where, even with all the power of the new hardware, it still hits a software sized brick wall.

One of the worst mistakes you can make in tech support is stating solutions you think you want rather than problems you actually have, because quite often there's a much smarter, better solution out there that just never occurred to you. Maybe because it hasn't even been conceived of or implemented yet. So, I'm going to stick to laying out my problems:

You can't just plug in a drive and Dyson down files the way you can a camera or SD card for images and video.

When using a keyboard, there's no way to navigate without taking your hands off said keyboard.

When loading web pages, I get the phone version rather than the desktop version way, way to often. Especially Reddit. Dammit, Reddit.

I can't podcast because I can't Skype or FaceTime or whatever with other people and still record my own audio at the system level at the same time. Let alone multiple tracks.

I can't create and deploy App Store apps for iPad using the iPad. Well, ok, not me, but developers can't and they're currently the largest group of professionals in the market.

I can't lend my iPad Pro to anyone else, be it a colleague or a kid, without them having access to all my stuff.

That's my list. I know other have their lists. But this one is mine.

And again, I could suggest just implement DocumentPicker for external storage the way ImagePicker is already implemented for SDCards, have an indirect navigation option using the keyboard the way Apple TV already has FocusUI using the Siri Remote, have a permanent "Load Desktop Site" setting like there's a permeant "Use Reader Mode" settings, have system-wide audio recording like there is video recording, release an Xcode for iPad app that, like the forthcoming Photoshop for iPad, lets developers perform an important subset of work synced to an online repository, and have an iCloud Accounts option that lets multiple users sign-in and sign-out to access their own environments, including GuestBoard and a kid's restricted mode.

I'd also add something about the Home screen, because if I don't, so many of you will point it out so immediately. There's some interesting stuff around the minus one Home screen — the page you get to by swiping the other way from the Home screen. But, ultimately, like I said back in 2015, I'd love to see iPad get the same thing Apple Watch and Apple TV got: It's own version of SpringBoard. iPadOS, like watchOS or tvOS.

Mostly because a dedicated iPadOS team would force major full point releases to ship every year, just like new versions of watchOS and tvOS, and not just every few years as iPhone gravity wells allowed.

There were rumors Apple was working on something like that, actually a lot of things I listed, for iOS 12. But, when the decision was made to go all-in on performance enhancements, it got postponed to iOS lucky-number 13 or later.

iPad Pro (2018) two weeks later

Ok, so this has ended up being far more rant than it has re-review. For the last two weeks I've been using the new iPad Pro for almost everything. Where I haven't been using the iPad Pro much if at all is video and image editing. Photoshop is just muscle memory for me at this point and I'm set in my ways, and I just can't do graphics work — not photo editing, that's fine, I mean graphics editing — as fast in Pixelmator on iPad as I can on the Mac. That might change when quote-unquote real Photoshop for iPad Pro ships next year. I'm cautiously neutral-mystic. We'll see.

Same for Final Cut Pro X. iMovie is quick. Luma Fusion is powerful. But neither lets me do what what I need, as fast as I need, like Final Cut. So, as much as some of you want some form of Xcode that lets you open your existing projects on the iPad Pro, I would very much like that for Final Cut Pro. I imagine that'll require a bunch of cloud-based abstractions, same as Photoshop, but just the ability to tap into, tweak, and send back work on the go would let me leave my Mac home far vmore often.

For other things, not just drawing, I find the iPad Pro far better and faster already. I'm basically doing all my writing on it. That's thanks to side-by-side apps, which I use all the time on iOS, because they're still a hot mess on macOS, and one that seems to have been abandoned as fast as it was introduced.

If all I did was blog, and edit if not record podcasts, I could easily go all-in on iPad Pro.

To steal a line from John Gruber, it's the lightness of iOS is what lets macOS be heavy, or maybe it's vice versa. Either way. Both. Whatever.

For those professionals who don't want or need a laptop, but do want or need more than a phone, iPad Pro can be just perfect. Amazing screen, amazing silicon, with a better-than-ever Apple Pencil and what feels more like a just-as-good-if-differently-compromised Keyboard Folio as options.

For those professionals who want a heavy Mac, like a 15-inch MacBook Pro or iMac Pro, iPad Pro might likewise be the perfect portable for when you want something light to take a subset of your work with you on the go. It's way easier to carry, especially than the iMac, but it still packs a ton of punch for everything else you want to do.

For those professionals for whom it's not reasonable to buy a second computer and iPad Pro just doesn't do enough to be the primary, that's totally valid too. And it's why Apple released a brand new MacBook Air at the same time, and even showed off a mobile Vega 15-inch MacBook Pro the same day.

Personally, I like the direction Apple is going with iPad Pro, it's just don't like how long it's taking to get there. The hardware is bleeding edge. Always. The software, be it iOS 9 or iOS 11, comes in fits and starts.

But traditional computers, including macOS, have so much legacy baggage that was never was or never should have been meant for humans to deal with. A few years to get copy and paste, a decade to get drag-and-drop. It's glacial in a way that's totally not cool, but it's not porting — it's re-imagining, and that's what needs to be done. Just much, much, much — did I say much — faster.

Can an iPad Pro (2018) replace your laptop, and does iOS 12 do enough to make the new hardware sing?

I received a lot of great feedback on my iPad Pro review and I appreciate it very much. But I also got some criticism and I think it was fair. I didn't have as many negatives on my list as some other reviewers, but I think it's because I reviewed the new hardware and most of the negatives were directed at the not so new software. Also, I didn't address the iPad Pros ability to replace a laptop, which is something almost every other review focused on extensively.

For the software, I viewed that as a known quantity and, at 20-minutes long already, didn't want to spend even more time recapitulating what's pretty much the same story wrapped in a new, if much more powerful book. The counterargument was and is, and again I think fairly, that the new power should prompt not a recapitulation but a reexamining of the story.

As a laptop replacement, I don't really wonder about the iPad Pro that way, any more than I wonder about the MacBook Air replacing the iMac Pro. Both the iPad Pro and MacBook Air are ultra-portables, and both the MacBook Air and iMac Pro are traditional computers, but to me they remain different, if overlapping tools in the belt. The counterargument was and is, that whether or not Apple is positioning the iPad Pro as a laptop replacement, tech media certainly and some or many customers are looking at it in exactly that way.

So, after spending two weeks now with Apple's third generation iPad Pro, I decided to focus this re-review on what I missed last time: iPad Pro as laptop replacement and the iPad Pro software story. And what I think everyone is still getting wrong.

iPad Pro (2018) as a laptop replacement

I think Apple had two slides at the October event that caused a lot of confusing. The first showed iPad sales relative to laptop sales in the rest of the industry. In addition to annoying PC laptop fans no end, it also helped many reviewers justify the iPad Pro-as-laptop-replacement as their primary narrative. After all, Apple was comparing the two, right up there on stage.

My read was different. It wasn't. Oh, look at how many people are choosing iPad as their laptop! It was, oh, look at how many people are choosing iPad instead of a laptop. That difference might sound subtle but I think it's also key to understanding the market.

The second showed A12X performance as being "Faster than 92% of all portable PCs". There, I think Apple was just strutting over its platform technology teams continued crushing of mobile silicon. But, combined with early leaked Geekbench scores showing the new iPad rivaled a modern MacBook Pro in terms of performance, I think, cemented "laptop replacement" in a lot of minds.

If it's as powerful as a MacBook Pro, it should be a MacBook Pro, right?

I have to admit, I find myself thinking that way a lot. I come from a traditional computer background that's shaped a lot of my preconceptions about these types of devices should be and do, and I have a very hard time looking beyond my own wants and needs and understanding that I'm not the market any more. In fact, traditional computer types like me are an increasingly small part of the market.

Hence that graph. And hence the iPad.

When Steve Jobs introduced it, from the very moment he introduced it, he went out of his way to clearly say and show that the iPad wasn't meant to be a laptop, let alone a laptop replacement. Yes, even though Apple had a keyboard dock for it on day one, it was meant to be a third category that fit between a smartphone and the Mac.

Now, that was fine for the iPad nothing, but iPad Pro is for pros, right? It has the word right in the name. Surely that's meant to be a laptop replacement?

It's super tempting to think that way, but it also seems limited. Is the MacBook Pro an iMac Pro replacement? For more people than the MacBook Air, I bet, but certainly not everyone. Nor is it meant to be. It's meant to be an alternative for those willing to trade some power for portability, or an addition for people who need maximum power at the desk but also as much power as possible on the go.

Is the 12-inch MacBook an iPad Pro replacement? Probably, for people who want something ultra-light that can run macOS down to it's UNIX terminal. For those who want an incredibly powerful tablet for illustration, drafting, modeling, and more? Not so much.

But they're not pros, is something really easy to say. It's like upstate New York. Anyone who lives even a town to the north is upstate. Anyone who doesn't do exactly what I do or something that fits in a traditional box isn't a pro. So they run a website and produce some of the best automation work and content on the planet. They use an iPad Pro as their primary computer. Must not really be such a Pro…

Yet, if Apple has had one core mission since inception it's been to relentlessly, continuously, democratize technology. To make it more accessible to more people. Not just to cater to existing pros but to help make new kinds and generations of pros. Not to serve only the needs of power users but to empower every user.

I can't tell you how many people I know — how many professionals in all walks of life — who have always found traditional computers to be intimidating and unapproachable. How many legit geniuses have been made to feel dumb and less than because their brains just didn't fit a file system or their fingers, a mouse.

When you look at that graph again, sure, there are some traditional computing types buying some of those iPads instead of a laptop. But there are countless more buying those iPads because they're not laptops.

Even iPad Pro with all the power of A12X, and they're using it to draw storyboards for major studio productions, swipe through medical scans, receive, mark up, and resend documents and comps, crush photos, djay clubs, take clients through and tweak architectural models, and do a ton of real pro work, every damn day.

And they'll be able to keep doing it for years to come because A12X can not only handle augmented reality, machine learning, computational photography, and other heavy workloads today, it has enough headroom to handle iOS 13, 14, 15, and likely many more workloads to come.

If those workloads are different from a journalists or a developers or, yeah, me, so be it. They're still every bit as important. If a laptop is better for you, great, you have plenty of those to choose from. If an iPad Pro is better for you, well it's the first thing that really is so everyone else can just back up off. Because it's not just about us. It's about all of us.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say if Apple didn't consider it exactly that way, the company wouldn't have introduced the new iPad Pro at the exact same event where, just minutes before, it introduced the new MacBook Air. An iPad Pro and a laptop, not an iPad Pro instead of a laptop.

iPad Pro 2018 and the iOS story

All that said, whether or not you or I or anyone thinks the iPad Pro should be a laptop replacement or not, there are undeniably areas where the iPad Pro still isn't all the iPad Pro it could be. Where, even with all the power of the new hardware, it still hits a software sized brick wall.

One of the worst mistakes you can make in tech support is stating solutions you think you want rather than problems you actually have, because quite often there's a much smarter, better solution out there that just never occurred to you. Maybe because it hasn't even been conceived of or implemented yet. So, I'm going to stick to laying out my problems:

You can't just plug in a drive and Dyson down files the way you can a camera or SD card for images and video.

When using a keyboard, there's no way to navigate without taking your hands off said keyboard.

When loading web pages, I get the phone version rather than the desktop version way, way to often. Especially Reddit. Dammit, Reddit.

I can't podcast because I can't Skype or FaceTime or whatever with other people and still record my own audio at the system level at the same time. Let alone multiple tracks.

I can't create and deploy App Store apps for iPad using the iPad. Well, ok, not me, but developers can't and they're currently the largest group of professionals in the market.

I can't lend my iPad Pro to anyone else, be it a colleague or a kid, without them having access to all my stuff.

That's my list. I know other have their lists. But this one is mine.

And again, I could suggest just implement DocumentPicker for external storage the way ImagePicker is already implemented for SDCards, have an indirect navigation option using the keyboard the way Apple TV already has FocusUI using the Siri Remote, have a permanent "Load Desktop Site" setting like there's a permeant "Use Reader Mode" settings, have system-wide audio recording like there is video recording, release an Xcode for iPad app that, like the forthcoming Photoshop for iPad, lets developers perform an important subset of work synced to an online repository, and have an iCloud Accounts option that lets multiple users sign-in and sign-out to access their own environments, including GuestBoard and a kid's restricted mode.

I'd also add something about the Home screen, because if I don't, so many of you will point it out so immediately. There's some interesting stuff around the minus one Home screen — the page you get to by swiping the other way from the Home screen. But, ultimately, like I said back in 2015, I'd love to see iPad get the same thing Apple Watch and Apple TV got: It's own version of SpringBoard. iPadOS, like watchOS or tvOS.

Mostly because a dedicated iPadOS team would force major full point releases to ship every year, just like new versions of watchOS and tvOS, and not just every few years as iPhone gravity wells allowed.

There were rumors Apple was working on something like that, actually a lot of things I listed, for iOS 12. But, when the decision was made to go all-in on performance enhancements, it got postponed to iOS lucky-number 13 or later.

iPad Pro (2018) two weeks later

Ok, so this has ended up being far more rant than it has re-review. For the last two weeks I've been using the new iPad Pro for almost everything. Where I haven't been using the iPad Pro much if at all is video and image editing. Photoshop is just muscle memory for me at this point and I'm set in my ways, and I just can't do graphics work — not photo editing, that's fine, I mean graphics editing — as fast in Pixelmator on iPad as I can on the Mac. That might change when quote-unquote real Photoshop for iPad Pro ships next year. I'm cautiously neutral-mystic. We'll see.

Same for Final Cut Pro X. iMovie is quick. Luma Fusion is powerful. But neither lets me do what what I need, as fast as I need, like Final Cut. So, as much as some of you want some form of Xcode that lets you open your existing projects on the iPad Pro, I would very much like that for Final Cut Pro. I imagine that'll require a bunch of cloud-based abstractions, same as Photoshop, but just the ability to tap into, tweak, and send back work on the go would let me leave my Mac home far vmore often.

For other things, not just drawing, I find the iPad Pro far better and faster already. I'm basically doing all my writing on it. That's thanks to side-by-side apps, which I use all the time on iOS, because they're still a hot mess on macOS, and one that seems to have been abandoned as fast as it was introduced.

If all I did was blog, and edit if not record podcasts, I could easily go all-in on iPad Pro.

To steal a line from John Gruber, it's the lightness of iOS is what lets macOS be heavy, or maybe it's vice versa. Either way. Both. Whatever.

For those professionals who don't want or need a laptop, but do want or need more than a phone, iPad Pro can be just perfect. Amazing screen, amazing silicon, with a better-than-ever Apple Pencil and what feels more like a just-as-good-if-differently-compromised Keyboard Folio as options.

For those professionals who want a heavy Mac, like a 15-inch MacBook Pro or iMac Pro, iPad Pro might likewise be the perfect portable for when you want something light to take a subset of your work with you on the go. It's way easier to carry, especially than the iMac, but it still packs a ton of punch for everything else you want to do.

For those professionals for whom it's not reasonable to buy a second computer and iPad Pro just doesn't do enough to be the primary, that's totally valid too. And it's why Apple released a brand new MacBook Air at the same time, and even showed off a mobile Vega 15-inch MacBook Pro the same day.

Personally, I like the direction Apple is going with iPad Pro, it's just don't like how long it's taking to get there. The hardware is bleeding edge. Always. The software, be it iOS 9 or iOS 11, comes in fits and starts.

But traditional computers, including macOS, have so much legacy baggage that was never was or never should have been meant for humans to deal with. A few years to get copy and paste, a decade to get drag-and-drop. It's glacial in a way that's totally not cool, but it's not porting — it's re-imagining, and that's what needs to be done. Just much, much, much — did I say much — faster.

Over the decades, Mac has transition from Motorola to PowerPC and on to Intel. Now, as Intel is faltering and Apple's own custom silicon is firing on all cylinders, it could be time for a third major transition. But how?

In 2005, Steve Jobs announced the Mac's hardware transition from PowerPC to Intel, just a few years after an equally momentous software transition, from the classic OS to OS X, now macOS, that began in 2001. Transitions are sort of Apple's thing.

Watch the video version. Seriously. It's got way more cool stuff in it.

Prior to that announcement,Apple had Mac-on-Intel running in the labs for years. Marklar was the codename and the gist was PowerPC was no longer a reliable platform and no longer providing not just the power but the efficiency Apple needed for the next many generations of Macs. So, the Intel transition happened.

Rumors have been percolating for years already about a similar transition, this time from Intel and to ARM. By many accounts, Apple has had MacBooks on ARM, running both iOS and macOS since, well, there was any ARM to run them on.

For a long time, Apple seemed content to just dangling over Intel's head like a silicon sword of Damocles, pressing them to keep on target and on pace.

But, as Apple's chipset prowess has grown and Intel's fortunes have faltered, the buzz around another great Mac transition has gotten louder again. Not an iOS clamshell or desktop box, mind you, interesting as both those products might be. But proper macOS running on proper Apple silicon.

And since the iPad Pro shipped with the Apple A12X, a desktop-as-in-i7-class processor, the buzz has become deafening.

The Rumors

Now, there have been a good number of Mac on ARM rumors over the years but they've never been as spot-on-reliable as recent iPhone rumors. Just the opposite, in fact.

'MacBook ARM Pro' concept image.

SemiAccurate, back in May of 2011, the same year Apple launched the 2nd generation MacBook Air that went on to define and inspire the modern age of ultrabooks:

So short story, x86 is history on Apple laptops, or will be in 2-3 years. In any case, it is a done deal, Intel is out, and Apple chips are in. The only question left is if they will use their own core, a Samsung core, or the generic ARM black box. My bet is on generic for the first round, with a custom uncore, and moving to progressively more proprietary features with each successive generation.

Obviously, that didn't happen. And that's the case with a lot of ARM-based Mac rumors. But I think it's important to go through the basic timeline.

An anonymous source told more information, Apple already made test equipment of Thunderbolt MacBook Air driven by A5 processor.

According to this source who saw live A5 MacBook Air actually, this test machine performed better than expected.

What they may have been referencing is the prototype hardware I mentioned previously.

In August of 2011, a paper was published by the Delfte University of Technology, titled Porting Darwin to the MV88F6281, subtitled ARMing the Snow Leopard. The author, T.F. Schaap, wrote in the abstract:

I worked in the Platform Technologies Group for 12 weeks, porting Darwin to the MV88F6281. The MV88F6281 is an ARMv5 compatible processor, with the custom Sheeva core at its heart. The goal of this project was to get Darwin building and booting into a full multi-user prompt.

ARM-based Macs, touchscreen Macs, iOS Macs, Retina Macs... Apple prototypes pretty much anything and everything any reasonable person would expect them to. A thousand no's for every yes requires a very high prototype to product ratio, after all...

Retina Macs have since shipped, the others, not so much.

Kuo Ming-Chi, from January of 2015, still a couple of months before that launch, via MacRumors:

Apple may launch Mac products that use own AP in next 1-2 years. This prediction is based on the assumption that Apple's self-developed AP performs at a level between Intel's Atom and Core i3 and is good enough for Mac. Using self- developed AP can help Apple better control the timing of Mac launches and Mac product features.

In hindsight, it seems like Kuo underestimated how fast Apple could push A-series performance but overestimated the rapidity of any switch to ARM-based Macs.

In April of 2017, Apple held it's now famous Mac Pro mea culpa, and as part of it, threw cold water on the idea of ARM-first Macs.

The company has no plans for touchscreen Macs, or for machines powered solely by the kind of ARM processors used in the iPhone and iPad. However, executives left open the possibility ARM chips could play a broader role as companion processors, something that showed up first with the T1 processor that powers the Touch Bar in the new MacBook Pro.

While Apple did test and did not like touch screen Macs, here it's important to remember the first law of Metaphysics… I mean Apple product marketing: nothing unannounced exists.

Two industry sources say that Apple is trying to cut its dependence on Intel when it comes to notebook chips and instead build those using ARM architecture, referring to the SoftBank-controlled British chip designer.

"Notebooks are becoming thinner, while consumers are demanding better mobility and longer battery life. That gives ARM's architecture, which is known for its power efficiency, a very good opportunity," a chip industry executive said.

Ian King and Mark Gurman, writing for Bloomberg, back in April of this year:

Apple Inc. is planning to use its own chips in Mac computers beginning as early as 2020, replacing processors from Intel Corp., according to people familiar with the plans.

The initiative, code named Kalamata, is still in the early developmental stages, but comes as part of a larger strategy to make all of Apple's devices -- including Macs, iPhones, and iPads -- work more similarly and seamlessly together, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. The project, which executives have approved, will likely result in a multi-step transition.

Pegatron is likely to land orders from Apple to produce an ARM-based MacBook model, codenamed Star with a series number N84, according to industry sources.

N84, though, wasn't a MacBook ARM. It was iPhone XR. And a reminder that randomly accurate means just that.

Kuo Ming-Chi, in a research note released just last month, via MacRumors:

We also expect that Mac models will adopt Apple's in-house-designed processor starting 2020 or 2021, which will create four advantages for Apple: (1) Apple could control everything about the Mac's design and production and be rid of negative impacts from Intel's processor shipment schedule changes. (2) Better profits thanks to lower processor cost. (3) Mac market share gain if Apple lowers the price. (4) It could differentiate Mac from peers' products.

The idea of moving Mac to ARM is so compelling, and seems so obvious and inevitable, it's like the rumors write themselves. But the truth is, change isn't just hard. Chage hurts. The costs cascade. Before you switch, you have to understand and appreciate the turbulence you'll go through and make sure you'll really, truly be better off on the other side. But change can also come in degrees and in stages. It doesn't have to be binary. You don't have to flip a switch. Unless, of course, like tearing off a bandaid, that ends up hurting less in the long run.

How Apple could go ARM

All that to say, there are several different ways Apple could choose to play this, and I think it's worth breaking them all down.

Sticking with Intel

Apple could, of course, simply stick with Intel. That way, everything that works now, from binary compatibility to Bootcamp for Windows, will just keep working. Well, everything except for Intel itself.

It's no secret that Intel has had a brutal couple of years. It went from industry-leading process innovation and fabrication and a tick-tock cycle of shrink-and-improve that no one else in the industry could match, to hitting a 10 nanometer wall so hard it bounced off and the impact has shaken every chip its put out since.

In other words, just as Intel went from Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge, and Haswell to Boradwell, it was supposed to go from Skylake to Cannon Lake, but it just couldn't get that tick to tock. And so, three years and counting later, we've instead gone through Kaby Lake and now Coffee Lake, with Whiskey and Amber Lakes spun off along the way, and seemingly endless optimization cycles and quote-unquote "refreshes" sandwiched in between.

Staying with Intel may be safe but it may no longer be secure.

Worse, it denies Apple what makes Apple so… Apple. The ability to integrate and differentiate from atom to bit. It's what let them ship the iPhone X in 2017 and there's simply no equivalent to that on the Mac side. Not when Intel still owns its heart.

Switching to AMD

While Intel flounders, AMD has been thread-ripping its way to the best performance its fielded in years. Compatible with Intel as the sole X86 licensee, AMD doesn't offer a graphical punch anywhere nearly as knock-out as Nvidia, but Intel graphics have never turned any polygon-shaded heads, and Apple's relationship with Nvidia is so bad it uses AMD for discrete graphics anyway. And AMD is already heading to the same 7 nanometer process Apple was first out the gate with earlier this fall.

AMD doesn't currently license Thunderbolt 3, which Apple is also deeply invested in for the Mac lineup at this point, and whether or not Apple could simultaneous dump Intel for AMD and coax or cajole them into providing Thunderbolt 3 to AMD, is an open question.

But I don't think it's the biggest one.

Ultimately, a move from Intel to AMD would only solidify what was. It would trade dependency on one outside company for dependency on another. It's a short term patch for a long term problem.

The Mac still wouldn't own its own heart.

Making Apple X86-64

If Apple wants to own its own destiny but retain maximum compatibility, it could also license X86 from Intel, x86-64 from AMD, and start producing its own Apple X-series processors for Mac, much as it makes the A-series for iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and HomePod, and S-series for Watch.

That's easy for me and pretty much anyone and everyone else who's conjectured about it over the years to say because we wouldn't have to try and convince or litigate Intel into granting another X86 license. Partly become it would be super interesting to see what a non-silicon merchant like Apple could do with x86, especially given everything its done to date with ARM.

Never say never in this business, but as unlikely as it is for Apple to get an x86 license it seems even more unlikely it would want one.

Binary compatibility is a huge feature and advantage for this approach and, frankly, either of the previous ones. But, as much as it's the present of the Mac, is it the future? It would be an Apple owned heart, at long last, but it would still be an old one.

Increasing ARM co-processors

Now, Apple hasn't exactly been waiting on Intel all this time anyway. X86 speculation aside, the indisputable fact is that Apple has already been shipping custom, ARM-based silicon for the Mac for a few years already. Namely, its T-series co-processors. The T1 shipped alongside the 2016 MacBook Pro and provided a Secure Enclave for Touch ID, and additional security for hardware components like the mic and camera indicator.

T2 shipped with the iMac Pro and has since spread to the 2018 MacBook Pro and the 2018 MacBook Air. In addition to Touch ID on the MacBooks, it provides for secure boot and real-time encryption, and a unified controller architecture, for all the Macs.

More intriguingly, T2 — which is rumored to be based on the A10 Fusion processor from iPhone 7 and the 2nd generation iPad Pro — also has custom HEVC encoding blocks that make working with video on the Mac faster than Intel alone would be capable of. Apple is also using the ISP — Image Signal Processor — in those chips to make the camera input, such as it is, the best it can possibly be.

In other words, Apple is already architecting around Intel. If Apple is going to include Face ID in future Macs, which seems inevitable at this point, it would require, at the very least, a T3 chip based on A11 or later, with a neural engine block, and then that opens the door to all sorts of accelerated artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language, and computer vision on the Mac as well.

Over time, those co-processors will keep growing in power and potential, and could, eventually, overtake X86.

Using Intel co-processors

And that's where, rather than Intel Macs with ARM co-processors, the prospect of ARM Macs with Intel co-processors comes in. Even as a short-term, transitional architecture.

Instead of Apple's Mac silicon picking up where Intel's X86 leaves off, Apple would handle all the heavy lifting for next-generation macOS software and app, and only engage an Intel core I-anything to run legacy software that hasn't yet been updated for the new Mac normal.

Theoretically — and again, anything is possible, even easy, if you're not the one in charge of implementing it — "lighter" Macs like the MacBook Air and Mac mini could be predominantly ARM and "heavier" Macs like the iMac and Mac Pro could have heavier Xeon quote-un-quote cop-processors that handle all sorts of really, really heavy lifting.

I think it's fair to say that was popular speculation when it was assumed Apple couldn't scale ARM to Mac-level performance. You know, before A12X shipped and clocked in at MacBook Pro levels of performance…

Going all-in on ARM

Apple really is the definition of show, don't tell. Sure, once in a very long while they pre-announce, like the upcoming modular Mac Pro. And once in an equally long while they get burned by that, like AirPower.

But, like I said at the beginning, by all accounts Apple has been working on iOS laptops and ARM Mac for years, just as they worked on Intel Macs for years before those were announced. Apple is a multibillion dollar company with laser-like focus. They can very literally afford to study, test, and prototype any idea, times ten, that any blogger, tweeter, or YouTuber can ever come up with, and usually years before they come up with them.

So, it's also possible Apple's platform technology's team has a full range of custom ARM silicon — full on X-series or whatever they call it — ready to be introduced over the next few years. Maybe slowly. Maybe rapidly.

Over the last few years, Apple has taken a lot back to the Mac. There's a new language, Swift. A new file system, APFS. Bitcode which let Apple move the Watch from 32-bit to 64-bit almost transparently.

There's even a new way to run iOS aka UIKit apps on a Mac, which traditionally has been home primarily to Mac aka AppKit apps. And there's a ton of Core OS systems that have been built for both platforms and, perhaps, with a unified chipset architecture in mind.

There would still be a ton of questions to answer, especially for people who do want to dual boot into Windows and/or Linux, but maybe not Windows and/or Linux on ARM, or do things and use software that is otherwise tied to X86 and Intel. At least at the time of switch and maybe for some time to follow.

Last time, it was apps like Office and Photoshop that made the switch rough. This time, those apps are already on or coming to ARM via iPad. But we're also very much in a beyond-Office and Photoshop world. So the pain points are likely to be both smaller and more numerous.

While the most dramatic option, not the most pragmatic one, going all-in on ARM also feels like the most Apple option.

Over the decades, Mac has transition from Motorola to PowerPC and on to Intel. Now, as Intel is faltering and Apple's own custom silicon is firing on all cylinders, it could be time for a third major transition. But how?

In 2005, Steve Jobs announced the Mac's hardware transition from PowerPC to Intel, just a few years after an equally momentous software transition, from the classic OS to OS X, now macOS, that began in 2001. Transitions are sort of Apple's thing.

Watch the video version. Seriously. It's got way more cool stuff in it.

Prior to that announcement,Apple had Mac-on-Intel running in the labs for years. Marklar was the codename and the gist was PowerPC was no longer a reliable platform and no longer providing not just the power but the efficiency Apple needed for the next many generations of Macs. So, the Intel transition happened.

Rumors have been percolating for years already about a similar transition, this time from Intel and to ARM. By many accounts, Apple has had MacBooks on ARM, running both iOS and macOS since, well, there was any ARM to run them on.

For a long time, Apple seemed content to just dangling over Intel's head like a silicon sword of Damocles, pressing them to keep on target and on pace.

But, as Apple's chipset prowess has grown and Intel's fortunes have faltered, the buzz around another great Mac transition has gotten louder again. Not an iOS clamshell or desktop box, mind you, interesting as both those products might be. But proper macOS running on proper Apple silicon.

And since the iPad Pro shipped with the Apple A12X, a desktop-as-in-i7-class processor, the buzz has become deafening.

The Rumors

Now, there have been a good number of Mac on ARM rumors over the years but they've never been as spot-on-reliable as recent iPhone rumors. Just the opposite, in fact.

'MacBook ARM Pro' concept image.

SemiAccurate, back in May of 2011, the same year Apple launched the 2nd generation MacBook Air that went on to define and inspire the modern age of ultrabooks:

So short story, x86 is history on Apple laptops, or will be in 2-3 years. In any case, it is a done deal, Intel is out, and Apple chips are in. The only question left is if they will use their own core, a Samsung core, or the generic ARM black box. My bet is on generic for the first round, with a custom uncore, and moving to progressively more proprietary features with each successive generation.

Obviously, that didn't happen. And that's the case with a lot of ARM-based Mac rumors. But I think it's important to go through the basic timeline.

An anonymous source told more information, Apple already made test equipment of Thunderbolt MacBook Air driven by A5 processor.

According to this source who saw live A5 MacBook Air actually, this test machine performed better than expected.

What they may have been referencing is the prototype hardware I mentioned previously.

In August of 2011, a paper was published by the Delfte University of Technology, titled Porting Darwin to the MV88F6281, subtitled ARMing the Snow Leopard. The author, T.F. Schaap, wrote in the abstract:

I worked in the Platform Technologies Group for 12 weeks, porting Darwin to the MV88F6281. The MV88F6281 is an ARMv5 compatible processor, with the custom Sheeva core at its heart. The goal of this project was to get Darwin building and booting into a full multi-user prompt.

ARM-based Macs, touchscreen Macs, iOS Macs, Retina Macs... Apple prototypes pretty much anything and everything any reasonable person would expect them to. A thousand no's for every yes requires a very high prototype to product ratio, after all...

Retina Macs have since shipped, the others, not so much.

Kuo Ming-Chi, from January of 2015, still a couple of months before that launch, via MacRumors:

Apple may launch Mac products that use own AP in next 1-2 years. This prediction is based on the assumption that Apple's self-developed AP performs at a level between Intel's Atom and Core i3 and is good enough for Mac. Using self- developed AP can help Apple better control the timing of Mac launches and Mac product features.

In hindsight, it seems like Kuo underestimated how fast Apple could push A-series performance but overestimated the rapidity of any switch to ARM-based Macs.

In April of 2017, Apple held it's now famous Mac Pro mea culpa, and as part of it, threw cold water on the idea of ARM-first Macs.

The company has no plans for touchscreen Macs, or for machines powered solely by the kind of ARM processors used in the iPhone and iPad. However, executives left open the possibility ARM chips could play a broader role as companion processors, something that showed up first with the T1 processor that powers the Touch Bar in the new MacBook Pro.

While Apple did test and did not like touch screen Macs, here it's important to remember the first law of Metaphysics… I mean Apple product marketing: nothing unannounced exists.

Two industry sources say that Apple is trying to cut its dependence on Intel when it comes to notebook chips and instead build those using ARM architecture, referring to the SoftBank-controlled British chip designer.

"Notebooks are becoming thinner, while consumers are demanding better mobility and longer battery life. That gives ARM's architecture, which is known for its power efficiency, a very good opportunity," a chip industry executive said.

Ian King and Mark Gurman, writing for Bloomberg, back in April of this year:

Apple Inc. is planning to use its own chips in Mac computers beginning as early as 2020, replacing processors from Intel Corp., according to people familiar with the plans.

The initiative, code named Kalamata, is still in the early developmental stages, but comes as part of a larger strategy to make all of Apple's devices -- including Macs, iPhones, and iPads -- work more similarly and seamlessly together, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. The project, which executives have approved, will likely result in a multi-step transition.

Pegatron is likely to land orders from Apple to produce an ARM-based MacBook model, codenamed Star with a series number N84, according to industry sources.

N84, though, wasn't a MacBook ARM. It was iPhone XR. And a reminder that randomly accurate means just that.

Kuo Ming-Chi, in a research note released just last month, via MacRumors:

We also expect that Mac models will adopt Apple's in-house-designed processor starting 2020 or 2021, which will create four advantages for Apple: (1) Apple could control everything about the Mac's design and production and be rid of negative impacts from Intel's processor shipment schedule changes. (2) Better profits thanks to lower processor cost. (3) Mac market share gain if Apple lowers the price. (4) It could differentiate Mac from peers' products.

The idea of moving Mac to ARM is so compelling, and seems so obvious and inevitable, it's like the rumors write themselves. But the truth is, change isn't just hard. Chage hurts. The costs cascade. Before you switch, you have to understand and appreciate the turbulence you'll go through and make sure you'll really, truly be better off on the other side. But change can also come in degrees and in stages. It doesn't have to be binary. You don't have to flip a switch. Unless, of course, like tearing off a bandaid, that ends up hurting less in the long run.

How Apple could go ARM

All that to say, there are several different ways Apple could choose to play this, and I think it's worth breaking them all down.

Sticking with Intel

Apple could, of course, simply stick with Intel. That way, everything that works now, from binary compatibility to Bootcamp for Windows, will just keep working. Well, everything except for Intel itself.

It's no secret that Intel has had a brutal couple of years. It went from industry-leading process innovation and fabrication and a tick-tock cycle of shrink-and-improve that no one else in the industry could match, to hitting a 10 nanometer wall so hard it bounced off and the impact has shaken every chip its put out since.

In other words, just as Intel went from Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge, and Haswell to Boradwell, it was supposed to go from Skylake to Cannon Lake, but it just couldn't get that tick to tock. And so, three years and counting later, we've instead gone through Kaby Lake and now Coffee Lake, with Whiskey and Amber Lakes spun off along the way, and seemingly endless optimization cycles and quote-unquote "refreshes" sandwiched in between.

Staying with Intel may be safe but it may no longer be secure.

Worse, it denies Apple what makes Apple so… Apple. The ability to integrate and differentiate from atom to bit. It's what let them ship the iPhone X in 2017 and there's simply no equivalent to that on the Mac side. Not when Intel still owns its heart.

Switching to AMD

While Intel flounders, AMD has been thread-ripping its way to the best performance its fielded in years. Compatible with Intel as the sole X86 licensee, AMD doesn't offer a graphical punch anywhere nearly as knock-out as Nvidia, but Intel graphics have never turned any polygon-shaded heads, and Apple's relationship with Nvidia is so bad it uses AMD for discrete graphics anyway. And AMD is already heading to the same 7 nanometer process Apple was first out the gate with earlier this fall.

AMD doesn't currently license Thunderbolt 3, which Apple is also deeply invested in for the Mac lineup at this point, and whether or not Apple could simultaneous dump Intel for AMD and coax or cajole them into providing Thunderbolt 3 to AMD, is an open question.

But I don't think it's the biggest one.

Ultimately, a move from Intel to AMD would only solidify what was. It would trade dependency on one outside company for dependency on another. It's a short term patch for a long term problem.

The Mac still wouldn't own its own heart.

Making Apple X86-64

If Apple wants to own its own destiny but retain maximum compatibility, it could also license X86 from Intel, x86-64 from AMD, and start producing its own Apple X-series processors for Mac, much as it makes the A-series for iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and HomePod, and S-series for Watch.

That's easy for me and pretty much anyone and everyone else who's conjectured about it over the years to say because we wouldn't have to try and convince or litigate Intel into granting another X86 license. Partly become it would be super interesting to see what a non-silicon merchant like Apple could do with x86, especially given everything its done to date with ARM.

Never say never in this business, but as unlikely as it is for Apple to get an x86 license it seems even more unlikely it would want one.

Binary compatibility is a huge feature and advantage for this approach and, frankly, either of the previous ones. But, as much as it's the present of the Mac, is it the future? It would be an Apple owned heart, at long last, but it would still be an old one.

Increasing ARM co-processors

Now, Apple hasn't exactly been waiting on Intel all this time anyway. X86 speculation aside, the indisputable fact is that Apple has already been shipping custom, ARM-based silicon for the Mac for a few years already. Namely, its T-series co-processors. The T1 shipped alongside the 2016 MacBook Pro and provided a Secure Enclave for Touch ID, and additional security for hardware components like the mic and camera indicator.

T2 shipped with the iMac Pro and has since spread to the 2018 MacBook Pro and the 2018 MacBook Air. In addition to Touch ID on the MacBooks, it provides for secure boot and real-time encryption, and a unified controller architecture, for all the Macs.

More intriguingly, T2 — which is rumored to be based on the A10 Fusion processor from iPhone 7 and the 2nd generation iPad Pro — also has custom HEVC encoding blocks that make working with video on the Mac faster than Intel alone would be capable of. Apple is also using the ISP — Image Signal Processor — in those chips to make the camera input, such as it is, the best it can possibly be.

In other words, Apple is already architecting around Intel. If Apple is going to include Face ID in future Macs, which seems inevitable at this point, it would require, at the very least, a T3 chip based on A11 or later, with a neural engine block, and then that opens the door to all sorts of accelerated artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language, and computer vision on the Mac as well.

Over time, those co-processors will keep growing in power and potential, and could, eventually, overtake X86.

Using Intel co-processors

And that's where, rather than Intel Macs with ARM co-processors, the prospect of ARM Macs with Intel co-processors comes in. Even as a short-term, transitional architecture.

Instead of Apple's Mac silicon picking up where Intel's X86 leaves off, Apple would handle all the heavy lifting for next-generation macOS software and app, and only engage an Intel core I-anything to run legacy software that hasn't yet been updated for the new Mac normal.

Theoretically — and again, anything is possible, even easy, if you're not the one in charge of implementing it — "lighter" Macs like the MacBook Air and Mac mini could be predominantly ARM and "heavier" Macs like the iMac and Mac Pro could have heavier Xeon quote-un-quote cop-processors that handle all sorts of really, really heavy lifting.

I think it's fair to say that was popular speculation when it was assumed Apple couldn't scale ARM to Mac-level performance. You know, before A12X shipped and clocked in at MacBook Pro levels of performance…

Going all-in on ARM

Apple really is the definition of show, don't tell. Sure, once in a very long while they pre-announce, like the upcoming modular Mac Pro. And once in an equally long while they get burned by that, like AirPower.

But, like I said at the beginning, by all accounts Apple has been working on iOS laptops and ARM Mac for years, just as they worked on Intel Macs for years before those were announced. Apple is a multibillion dollar company with laser-like focus. They can very literally afford to study, test, and prototype any idea, times ten, that any blogger, tweeter, or YouTuber can ever come up with, and usually years before they come up with them.

So, it's also possible Apple's platform technology's team has a full range of custom ARM silicon — full on X-series or whatever they call it — ready to be introduced over the next few years. Maybe slowly. Maybe rapidly.

Over the last few years, Apple has taken a lot back to the Mac. There's a new language, Swift. A new file system, APFS. Bitcode which let Apple move the Watch from 32-bit to 64-bit almost transparently.

There's even a new way to run iOS aka UIKit apps on a Mac, which traditionally has been home primarily to Mac aka AppKit apps. And there's a ton of Core OS systems that have been built for both platforms and, perhaps, with a unified chipset architecture in mind.

There would still be a ton of questions to answer, especially for people who do want to dual boot into Windows and/or Linux, but maybe not Windows and/or Linux on ARM, or do things and use software that is otherwise tied to X86 and Intel. At least at the time of switch and maybe for some time to follow.

Last time, it was apps like Office and Photoshop that made the switch rough. This time, those apps are already on or coming to ARM via iPad. But we're also very much in a beyond-Office and Photoshop world. So the pain points are likely to be both smaller and more numerous.

While the most dramatic option, not the most pragmatic one, going all-in on ARM also feels like the most Apple option.